A week ago, I was reading a news article about the spike in deaths during the summer due to the coronavirus for those who are pregnant.  What I found most striking about the article was not the data regarding the fatalities, but how the writer referred to those who were pregnant.  Repeatedly, the term used was “pregnant people” to refer those individuals who were dying from the coronavirus.  It was the first time I had seen the term.  In May, I heard a member of Congress using the term “birthing people” during a public hearing, which I thought very odd.

In a clumsy attempt to have what the Left says is “inclusive” language, we must say pregnant people instead of pregnant women, and we must say birthing people instead of mothers.  This change in language is supposedly necessary, because the Left considers women (born female) who transition to men to be men; but these men still have female reproductive organs and can still give birth.  In the eyes of the Left, both men and women can give birth.  Very confusing.

At the University of Pennsylvania, there is a transgender woman, Lia Thomas, who has recently broken women’s swimming records.  In news reports, journalist have you used the terms “shattered” and “smash” to describe the breaking of the prior records.  It should be noted that the 22-year-old Lia competed at the school as a man for three years, as Will Thomas.  NCAA rules mandate at least one year of testosterone suppression treatment to be eligible to compete as a woman.

In June 2018, some Connecticut parents expressed outrage when two transgender girls won the top prizes at the state championship for track and field.  Terry Miller won first place and Andraya Yearwood came in second place.  Parents complained that Miller and Yearwood had an unfair advantage over non-transgender students.  Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference rules allow high school athletes to compete on the genders with which they identify.  Its executive director, Glenn Lungarini, says that the athletes’ right to compete is no different than other classes of people not being allowed to compete together in the past.

In the mixed martial arts, a commentator described a 2013 match between Fallon Fox and Erika Newsome as follows:

Fox, a male to female transgender athlete, destroyed Erika Newsome in a Coral Gables, FL, MMA fight during which she “secured a grip on Newsome’s head… With her hands gripping the back of Newsome’s skull, she delivered a massive knee, bringing her leg up while pulling her opponent’s head down. The blow landed on Newsome’s chin and dropped her, unconscious, face-first on the mat.” That was Newsome’s last pro fight.

Fox also beat Tamikka Brents, in 2014, a fight lasting just over two minutes after the referee ended the contest.  Here is some commentary on the aftermath:

Brents received seven staples to her head, and also suffered a concussion. She was overpowered by Fox to an extent that even the orbital bone inside her skull was fractured.

Fallon Fox was born male and is a transgender woman.

This is complete madness.

Title IX (of the Education Amendments of 1972) states the following:

No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance. . .

While the language does not reference sports specifically, competitive sports are part of education programs.  There has also been a long tradition of having separate sports teams for boys/men and girls/women.  That tradition is based on biology.  The biological fact that credentials one to be eligible for girls/women sports teams is the absence of the Y chromosome.  Simply stated, one must be female to participate in girls/women sports.

Someone who is male but feels feminine or dresses femininely or has had gender reassignment surgery and undergoes hormone therapy, does not change the chromosomal fact of being male.

If LeBron James began calling himself LaBron and began taking a steady diet of testosterone suppressors for one year (or ten years!) and then joined the WNBA, we would all see the absurdity in this.

The absurdity, however, continues and is embraced by the highest levels of the federal government.  The Biden Administration’s 2022 fiscal budget replaced the word mother with birthing people.

In June 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an opinion, R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission), that gender identity is a protected class under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Title VII:

It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

To protect gender identity under Title VII makes a mockery of the entire notion of civil rights.  One of the basic tenets that undergirds the idea of providing special civil rights protection is immutability.  Race is an immutable characteristic because an individual does not choose his ancestry.  Characteristics like color, religion, and national origin also have to do with ancestry.  Since one does not get to select his sixteen great-great-grandparents, it would seem to be unfair to hold such traits against him.  Sex, on the other hand, is not about ancestry, but about chromosomes, which is also an immutable characteristic.

When Congress included sex as a protected classification, representatives and senators were addressing issue of the unfairness of treating a woman differently (employment opportunities, harassment, etc.) simply on account of being a woman (this would be true for a man as well).

Transgender individuals are not entitled to special civil rights protection because being transgender is the polar opposite of immutability.  Transgender individuals affirmatively select to change their gender identity.

Authoring the opinion of the Court, Justice Gorsuch wrote:

An employer who fired an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids. Those who adopted the Civil Rights Act might not have anticipated their work would lead to this particular result. But the limits of the drafters’ imagination supply no reason to ignore the law’s demands. Only the written word is the law, and all persons are entitled to its benefit.

Justice Gorsuch uses tortured logic to shoehorn special civil rights protection for transgender individuals claiming that it is their sex that is at issue.  This interpretation completely ignores the context of why Congress enacted the law in the first place.

It may be unwise for an employer to fire a person because he is transgender, but the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not provide any legal protection from such a decision.  At a minimum, Congress would have to pass a separate statute to address this issue.  Very likely, we would have to adopt a constitutional amendment to authorize Congress to act in this area.

The federal government has shown through gestures in language and in interpretation of the law an openness to the concerns of transgender individuals.  The Administration has approved of transgender men competing in women’s sports; the Supreme Court has not ruled on the matter (yet).  Still, this openness is very encouraging to the Left, which is not in the interest of women and girls who want to play professional or scholastic sports.

In order to combat this assault on women athletes, we must speak in clear language.  Transgender women are not women; they are men pretending to be women.  Out of good manners, our society can go along with pretense regarding which restrooms to use and with pronouns to use.  We must, however, draw a line when it comes to sports.  The setting of records, college scholarships, and the physical well-being of women are on the line.

Abraham Lincoln once posed this question: How many legs does a dog have?  The response was four.  Lincoln went on and asked: If we call the tail a leg, then how many legs does a fog have?  The response was five.  Lincoln stated: No, just because you call a tail a leg doesn’t make it so.

We can learn a lot from our sixteenth president.

On June 26, 2008, the United States Supreme Court issued its landmark decision, District of Columbia v. Heller, ruling that the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects an individual’s right to keep and bear arms, unconnected with service in a militia. 

The Second Amendment reads:

A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

In defining a well regulated Militia, writing for the Court’s majority, Justice Antonin Scalia quotes a 1939 case as follows: the Militia comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense.

On August 25, 2020, a 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse arrived at the scene of unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, after two days of protests and rioting, to protect private property.  Kyle was armed with an AR-15.  Rittenhouse was a militiaman acting in the common defense of his father’s city.

Later that evening, while Kyle was stand guard in front of a car dealership, he was attacked by protestors.  Kyle killed two and injured one.  This killing was in self-defense, which was captured on video.  In November 2021, Kyle was on put on trial for these shootings, along with several other charges.  Two changes were dismissed.  He was found not guilty on all other charges, including the three shootings.

What should have been an open and shut case of Kyle’s innocence, turned into a polarizing media sensation.  Even with the availability of the video, which showed him being attacked (kicked in the head by one, struck in the head with a skateboard by another, had a gun pointed at his head by a third) and showed him running away from his attackers, much of the media and liberal politicians portrayed Rittenhouse as a terrorist, vigilante, and murderer.

The criminal past of the two men (Huber and Rosenbaum) killed did not soften the criticism of Rittenhouse (one of them was convicted of sexual conduct with five preteen boys).  In response to the verdict in the case, Governor Tony Evers of Wisconsin said in his statement, “No verdict will be able to bring back the lives of Anthony Huber and Joseph Rosenbaum…”.  Evers apparently feels that these two felons who assaulted Kyle is worthy of public sympathy.

The physical attacks on Rittenhouse, the harsh criticism directed, and empathy for his assailants, demonstrates a particular loathing for this young man.  There is video that should have exonerated him in the eyes of the public.  The widespread disregard of the video evidence testifies to something visceral directed at Rittenhouse.

Very present in the American Left is a sneering, and, very often, hatred, of the country.  From tearing down of statues of historical leaders and calls to abolish the Electoral College to renaming Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day and the 1619 Project, the Left is saying that the United States of America and many of its institutions are illegitimate and evil.

Kyle Rittenhouse, who is white, male, probably heterosexual, and courageous enough, even at his young age, to run toward an area of civil unrest to stand up to evil of rioting, epitomizes much of what they despise about America.  He seems to channel the spirit of those in the 1770s who mutual pledged to each other their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to fight off the tyranny of Great Britain.  Those who attack Rittenhouse, physically and rhetorically, apparently see in him the same patriotism of those who fought to found this nation, a nation they see as deeply flawed.  With his semi-automatic rifle, which was willing to use to defend commercial property and himself against rioters, he embodies the Second Amendment that has always been a thorn in the side of many of those on the political left.  He symbolizes the best of what America has to offer.  For this, the Left hates Kyle Rittenhouse.

For over a year, Rittenhouse was abused by the legal system, which included incarceration.  To say that this was disgusting grossly understates this injustice. He should have been given a medal for his heroism.

In a 1998 U.S. Supreme Court case, Campbell v. Louisiana, the Court held that a defendant had the right to sue to overturn his indictment because no black person ever served as grand jury foreperson in Evangeline Parish, in which over 20% of registered voters are black.  Campbell, who was indicted for second-degree murder, was white.  He was accused of killing another man, who also was white.  Yet, he mainly appealed his indictment on the grounds that it violated his Fourteenth Amendment equal protection and due process rights.  Somehow, because of an alleged racist exclusion of a black American from serving in the role of foreperson, Campbell felt that the judicial process harmed him.

I remember at the time speaking to a coworker about the decision in the case.  The idea that Campbell had legal standing to sue seemed absurd to me.  While he did suffer the injury of being indicted, he did not suffer any injury on account of the foreperson being white.  My colleague felt differently.  He said it was a good idea to take a closer look at the case and at the process that was called into question.

The mere hint that racism was involved in the judicial process, no matter how tangential or irrelevant, was enough to cast the whole process as illegitimate, even if it resulted in a murderer being set free.

With voter ID laws, we have a similar situation.  Showing identification to a poll worker on Election Day to verify one’s identity before voting strikes most U.S. citizens as reasonable.  Given the possibility of another party casting a ballot in someone else’s name, showing identification is reasonable.  However, since many on the Left have effectively branded such an idea as racist, requiring that a voter verify his identity prior to voting is now seen as illegitimate.

The Left offers two reasons for the racism charge: (1) many black Americans do not have government-issued identification cards and (2) Republicans want to make it harder for black Americans – roughly 90% of whom support the Democratic Party – to vote.

My response to the first charge is that about 75% of blacks have IDs.  Of those who do not, identification cards are generally easy to get at local departments of motor vehicles.  There is no evidence of the second charge.  Even if there was some truth to that charge, it would only be relevant if black Americans were somehow uniquely incapable of obtaining the required identifications.  Those who suggest such an idea are insulting their fellow citizens in the name of defending them.

I find the charge of racism odd.  Why would it be that blacks would have a harder time, compared to whites, getting an ID?  Perhaps, the Left means to say poor people, and blacks may be disproportionately poor, so race is a proxy.  If so, why not simply say poor people will have a more difficult time, rather using racism, which is a more loaded term.  Looks to me like the use of loaded language is the point.  It puts the proponents of voter ID laws on the defensive.  Injustice against blacks gets the nation’s attention.

Those in favor of presenting IDs before voting remind us that one needs an ID to:

• Board an airplane
• Stay at a hotel
• Purchase an Amtrak ticket
• Apply for a job
• Drive a car
• Purchase alcohol/cigarette
• Open a bank account
• Withdraw funds from a bank account
• Rent/buy a house or apply for mortgage
• Get married

No one ever alleges that any of the above activities or their participants are being “suppressed” because of the ID requirement.

Those in opposition to presenting IDs before voting respond (when there is a coherent response) to the above by saying that voting is a constitutional right.  That is a non sequitur.  There is a constitutionally protected right to gun ownership, but one must have an ID to purchase a firearm.  By the way, there is no constitutional right to vote.  The Fifteenth Amendment guarantees that someone cannot be denied the right to vote on account of his race.

The reason the Left focuses on race when it comes to voter IDs is because it is politically useful and, more importantly, it works.  Linking someone’s motives to racism, no matter how reckless, tends to place one on the defensive.  Once such a charge is made, it is very difficult for that someone to demonstrate his innocence.

One key reason that it works can be explained by author Shelby Steele’s 1990 book, The Content of Our Character.  “The Memory of Enemies” is the final chapter where Steele discusses how black Americans can reenact an “enemy-memory” through situations like hearing a Southern accent or seeing a pickup truck with a gun rack.  For some black Americans, any barrier to vote that could be deemed racial is a case where some remember an enemy that was often prepared to use violence to prevent blacks from voting.  Such memories – even if one did not actually live during the Jim Crow era – are enough to take a defensive posture and fight against policies that bring about barriers.

Being susceptible to enemy-memories is the result of decisions made after emancipation in 1865.  The following year, Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1866.  In 1868, the nation adopted the Fourteenth Amendment.  Both provided former slaves with U.S. citizenship and legal rights.  These were good things, but then, it also meant that former slaves would be living alongside the population that had enslaved them for generations.

One can imagine what might have happened had the Jews remained in Germany after WWII.  We cannot know how events would have developed, but it is likely that the Jewish population would have adopted an identity that was in opposition to the larger German population, even if that population genuinely wanted to make amends.  Creating Israel, as the homeland for the Jewish people, among other things, allowed the Jews to not have a constant reminder of their oppression.

The “Israel” for free blacks (or people of color) was the Colony of Liberia.  A few thousand blacks were relocated to the colony, but the project was generally viewed to be unsuccessful and was unpopular among the black population and abolitionists.  As a result, history played out as it did, where most blacks stayed here in the United States.  That history has left psychological scars.  It has made many within black America suspicious of their fellow countrymen.  The Left understands this and, unfortunately, uses the historical mistreatment of the black population as a political weapon.  Joe Biden has smeared Georgia’s new voting law as “these new Jim Crow laws”, that the law “makes Jim Crow look like Jim Eagle”, and as the “Jim Crow in the 21^st century”.  Today, blacks and whites together are wary of any policy that could be seen as racist.

It is worth noting that other countries have voter ID laws, without controversy surrounding them.  One country is Ghana.  Another one is Nigeria.  A third one is Kenya.  Many countries in Africa have some form of voter identification.  These are nations where blacks populate them, and blacks govern them.  They can evaluate a public policy, free of the effects of an enemy-memory.  Free of the racist stigma, the people of these nations can recognize a good idea when they see it.

Voter ID is one of those good ideas.

On December 21^st, the statue of Robert E. Lee was removed from the U.S. Capitol.  For over a century, Lee’s statue was one of the two that represented Virginia; the other is of George Washington.

A week earlier, on December 15^th, there was serious discussion of renaming Abraham Lincoln High School in San Francisco because our sixteenth president failed to demonstrate that black lives mattered to him and how his policies affected American Indians.

These follow a long line of similar stories that happened in 2020, including:

• Tearing down statues of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, and Frederick Douglass
• Rhode Island dropped from its official name, the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, the last three words
• Renaming musical groups Lady Antebellum to Lady A and Dixie Chicks to The Chicks
• Princeton removes Woodrow Wilson’s name from its public policy school
• White voice actor Mike Henry steps down from voicing black cartoon character
• The Washington Redskins changed its name to the Washington Football Team

When we entered 2020, the nation was certain that two events that would happen: President Trump’s impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate at the beginning of the year (Yes, there was an impeachment!) and the presidential election at the end of the year.

In any other year, those two events would have dominated the news.

Who would have predicted that the United States, along with the rest of the world, would be embroiled with fighting and coping with a pandemic?  And the economic recession that would result from the coronavirus?  Even as we approach the end of the year, the virus is still a problem as people are still contracting it with, very often, unpleasant symptoms, sometimes resulting in death.  The national unemployment rate, while falling since the spring, is nearly double that of January and February.  We are not out of the woods.

With the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, there was a Supreme Court vacancy six weeks before the 2020 election.  In recent decades, any Supreme Court nomination captures the attention of the public.  This one did as well.  The process moved along without delay or much controversy.  The scheduled vote in the Senate took place on October 26^th; Judge Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed.  Only political junkies will remember the Supreme Court vacancy and confirmation as a major event five years from now.

There is one event that will no doubt be written about and read about in history books in years to come.

On May 25^th, in Minneapolis, George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, died in police custody.  He was face down on the ground with the knee of 44-year-old Officer Derek Chauvin, a white man, on his neck.  The knee was on Floyd’s neck for a reported eight minutes and forty-six seconds.  There were three other police officers present looking on: Tou Thao (Asian), J. Alexander Kueng (black), and Thomas Lane (white).

The days and weeks afterward saw demonstrations and riots all over the country, and around the world.

We have had black men who have died in police custody or have been killed by white police officers before.  What made this event so particularly egregious?  Why not Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown?

The eight minutes and forty-sex seconds is one obvious candidate.  That length of time for the cop’s knee to be on Floyd’s neck strikes many as unnecessary and cruel.

Another possibility is that this all took place during the pandemic.  Specifically, early in the pandemic when Americans were cooped up in their homes, many unable to work or to go out spend time with friends and family.  The death of Floyd possibly caused an already frustrated public to react in ways they may not have in normal times.

A third is the image itself.  For all the world to see, there was a black man apparently suffering in police custody.  This, however, was not just any black man.  Floyd was dark-skinned.  He had very full lips.  He had wide nostrils.  With these African features, George Floyd was unmistakably black.  He was completely at the mercy of the officer.  Officer Chauvin did not have a particularly menacing expression as he pinned Floyd pinned to the ground.  His look seemed one of indifference, even as Floyd expressed that he had difficulty breathing.  One might say that the optics were bad.

An image of a powerful white cop cruelly subduing a suffering black man was, to many, a clear example of black subjugation by the police.  Black Americans had in Chauvin and Floyd the undeniable proof of what they had been claiming about law enforcement for decades.

This example of black subjugation seems to go beyond law enforcement.  There is no question that the incident called into question methods of policing and racial attitudes toward blacks by white police officers (incidentally, there is no evidence that Chauvin’s treatment of Floyd had anything to do with race).  For many Americans, however, the image of a black man being held down by a white cop was the perfect metaphor for the United States of America.  It was a metaphor that America is a fundamentally a bad country.  And it was as if many white Americans said to themselves, “Oh my God, they caught us red-handed!”.

Then came George Floyd demonstrations by black, white, and races in between.  There were even demonstrations in towns that were nearly 100% white, with Black Lives Matter signs and similar messages.  White America was thus in the position of having to demonstrate a negative: that they were not racist.  Those protesting intended to make it clear that they were in solidarity with George Floyd and not with the “racist” cop.

The question arises: Why were so many Americans so susceptible to the idea that America is bad, and that some collective apology, on behalf of the nation, was needed in response to the Minneapolis incident?

One likely answer is that media has made the country sensitive on matters concerning race in recent years.  On issues of crime, education, income, and wealth, where there are disparities between blacks and whites, some in our media will suggest or claim racism is the cause.  Many now suggest that opposing illegal entry into the country or limiting immigration from certain nations is somehow racist.  The steady diet of this kind of messaging from the media personalities (television and print) have had some effect on the psyche of many Americans.

America has always been obsessed with race.  From slavery and Jim Crow laws to I.Q. tests and the O.J. Simpson trial, there has always been national fascination with race, much of it unhealthy.  This unhealthy interest in things racial has been part of country’s identity.  For all of America’s virtues, there was always a deep stain of how the nation conducted its racial business.  Many elites, I believe, see and to some extent appreciate America’s greatness but also like balancing that with a focus on its shortcomings (America, you’re not so great).

However, that balancing act began to unravel on November 4, 2008.  Electing a Barack Obama, a black man, to the presidency of the United States, seemed like it might go a long way in removing the stain. 

At first, the historic election of Barack Obama was an interesting story to cover.  Obama, however, was not simply elected, he was re-elected.  And all the while, he was doing all the mundane things presidents do (from meeting with congressional leaders to pardoning turkeys).  Having a black man as president somehow became normal.  The symbolism of having someone black in the White House suggested that America was no longer bad.  It had cleaned up its act in handling its racial business.

This was too much for media, the elites, and the Left to handle.

The 2012 shooting death of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman captured the attention of the nation.  Martin was black.  Zimmerman is Hispanic.  To attempt to racialize the incident, some media sources such as The New York Times and CNN described Zimmerman as a white Hispanic.

The 2014 shooting death of Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson also dominated the news for months.  The reporting was slanted, painting Brown as the victim, with little suggestion that his actions may have contributed to his death.  The Black Lives Matter movement gained steam in the wake of Brown’s death.  And then we saw:

• Voter identification laws were assumed to be racist.
• Some in the media suggested that opposition to the Affordable Care Act was motivated by racism.
• Criticizing President Obama was open to charges of racism.
• Since 2015, many believe President Trump is racist.

The election of Barack Obama was a traumatizing event for the country.  While his election may have signaled that America was no longer the sinful country of its past, Obama’s presidency has made us more sensitive about racial matters.  Ironically, the less racism there is in America, as Obama’s elections testify, the more the Left wants to suggest that the nation has not made much progress since the 1950s.  There is a desire among some Americans to search behind every tree and around every corner for racial infractions.  Identifying racism makes those who seek it feel virtuous.  There is also power in being able to label adversaries racist.  There has even been change in how we use language to keep America on the hook.  We are now bombarded with terms such as anti-racist and systemic racism. There is a significant portion of the American public that needs America to have just enough racism that clearly tarnishes the nation’s image as a great nation.  The elites seized upon the death of George Floyd to incite racial division, to rebuke America’s history and icons, and to end any possibility of removing the nation’s historical stain.

Last week, President Trump debated former Vice President Joe Biden in the first of three debates.  I thought the match up was a draw.  Biden did what he needed to do: appear to not have signs of cognitive decline.  Trump had most issues on his side.

Unfortunately, if the polls are any indication, a draw was not what Trump needed.  Biden is ahead to Trump in nearly every national poll, and he is beating Trump in most battleground states.  Trump needed to focus on raising doubts that Biden was up for the job.

Trump was rude, even for Trump.  He continually interrupted Biden.  He needlessly battled with the moderator, Chris Wallace.  He looked bad.  If Trump was hoping to convince the few undecided voters in important key states, it is doubtful that he was going to attract their support.

Election Day is four weeks away.

Trump, if he is to win re-election, needs to turn this situation around.

There are reasons for Trump supporters to be hopeful.

Last Friday, we learned that Trump tested positive for the Coronavirus.  For a 74-year-old man who is more than a bit overweight, this is a potential serious matter.  He spent the weekend in the hospital.  As of this writing, his health has made significant progress and he was discharged earlier this evening.  If he makes a full recovery, he may get a modest boost in the polls.

The vice presidential debate will take place this Wednesday.  Given the ages and the health concerns of the two running for the top job, this debate will have greater importance than normal.  Senator Harris, a former prosecutor, will be prepared to hit Vice President Pence on the federal government’s handling of the pandemic, as well as other issues such as health care and gay rights.  Pence, a former radio talk show host and skilled debater, will be well-prepared to handle questions.  Harris, on the other hand, as we discovered during the Democratic Party primary debates, is not terribly quick on her feet when questioned about her own record (TULSI GABBARD!).  She may have some difficulty explaining her support for the Green New Deal (which would end fossil fuel use within a decade), “Medicare for All” bill (which would end private health insurance for nearly all medical procedures), and providing free health care for those in the country unlawfully.  A Pence win on Wednesday will help the Republican ticket.

This Friday, the Norwegian Nobel Committee will announce the 2020 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.  Trump received three nominations for the prize.  The first for his role in the United Arab Emirates-Israel peace deal; the second for Trump’s help in securing normalized economic relations between Serbia and Kosovo; the third for his foreign policy philosophy (the Trump Doctrine).  There is a real chance that Trump could walk away with the prize.  If he is announced the recipient of the award this week, it will enhance his stature as an international leader.  The American people will have a more favorable view of the president, which will likely show up in future polling and, more importantly, votes in the general election.

Trump and Biden will square off two more times before the election.  If Trump can (1) successfully tie the Democratic Party and, by extension, Biden, as the party of Antifa, riots, and anti-police and (2) promote himself as the president who cut taxes, made America energy independent, and a leader who both made the world safer place, the president would have made the case to continue the work for another four years.

One week from today, the Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to begin confirmation hearings for Trump’s nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Amy Coney Barrett.  It is too soon to tell how smoothly the hearings will go, but one can guess that Democratic senators will try to paint Barrett as an extremist on questions such as health care and abortion.  The fact that she is a devout Catholic might come up.  Still, the Republicans have the votes to approve the nominee.  Absent new information or an unforeseen event, by month’s end, the nation will have a new Supreme Court Justice.  On the eve of the election, a political victory of this importance will cement Trump’s image as an executive who gets things done.

Even with the unforced errors in the past, the month of October can produce opportunities for the voting public to see Trump as a president who deserves to be re-elected.

This is a repost, with slight modifications, of a pieces posted December 18, 2015 and July 28, 2018.

The War Between the States; War of Northern Aggression; Second American Revolution; War of 1861; War for Southern Independence; Mr. Lincoln’s War; American Civil War; Civil War; or simply, the War.

These are some of the names that have used to describe the military conflict in the United States between 1861 and 1865.  The War of the Rebellion – the official name of what most Americans refer to as the Civil War – is the subject of many books.  In some book stores, there is a section called U.S. History and a separate section called The Civil War.  The Civil War holds a special place in American history.  This is not surprising given that the war produced over 600,000 casualties, more than all other American wars combined.  Also, the divisions in the country then, which helped ignite the conflict, still exist today.  The cultural differences between the North and the South are still with us.  The sectional political differences that existed then persist to this day (most states in the South are reliably “Red” and most states in the North are reliably “Blue”).  And, of course, the racial divide, which often meant the difference between bondage and freedom early in our history, has not quite healed.

The different names referring to the conflict also, in some ways, reflect the differing in the reasons and perspectives for the conflict.

Ask random people why there was a war, and you will invariably hear “slavery” was the reason.  Some will cite “state-rights” as the core issue.  A few will even point to “the tariff” as the cause.  It is quite telling that Americans cannot quite agree on what caused a national crisis that resulted in Americans taking up arms against each other for four long years.  This lack of clarity is one reason of many reasons why there have been so many books written on the subject and continue to be written.

The question of why there was war between the two regions is one worth answering.

In November 1860, American voters went to the polls and elected the Republican Party nominee President of the United States.  The presidential nominee, Abraham Lincoln, was the country’s first Republican president.  Both houses of Congress were also controlled by the Republican Party.  The party was only six years old, having been founded in Wisconsin in 1854.  Wisconsin, itself, had only joined the Union six years earlier.  The Republican Party had been put together by former Whigs, Free Soilers, and a few Democrats.  The new party had adopted most of the platform of the Whigs, namely, economic protectionism and modernization.  The Republican Party had also adopted the position that it wanted to stop the spread of slavery within the United States.

To many in the Southern states, this must have been quite shocking.  A brand new party; with no base of support in the South; founded by abolitionists; opposed to the spread of slavery; formed in a relatively new state, so far north it may as well been part of Canada, had just taken over the U.S. government.  It is no surprise that several of the Southern states would announce their intentions to leave the Union.

The consensus of the rest of the country was that the nation breaking apart would be a bad thing.  It could easily set the precedent of other states wanting to leave the Union.  It would also suggest that the experiment of self-governance did not, and, perhaps, could never work.  Abraham Lincoln did not want to be the president that presided over the dissolution of the United States of America.

The South, led by Jefferson Davis, wanted to leave the Union and was willing to use military force to achieve this goal, since it was not in its interest to stay.  The North, led by Abraham Lincoln, wanted to keep the country together and was willing to use military force to do so, since it was not its interest for the South to go.  “And the war came.”

The intentions of the South warrant closer scrutiny.  In 1861, Lincoln stated in his inaugural address that he would not interfere with the institution of slavery where it already existed.  Lincoln also tacitly approved in the same address a proposed amendment to the Constitution (Corwin Amendment) that would prevent any future amendments from interfering with the institution of slavery.  These concessions would not deter the Southern states from their intentions to leave the Union.

Why did Lincoln’s words not reassure the South?  Why would the Southern states risk war by attempting to secede?  What did Southerners fear?

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war.

Lincoln, Second Inaugural, March 4, 1865

Those three sentences in Lincoln’s 1865 address may provide useful clues.  First, in reference to slavery itself, Lincoln acknowledges that the institution was somehow the cause of the war.  He seems to be saying that slavery had something to do with the conflict but may not have been the primary cause.  Second, it may be helpful to refer to the census of 1860.  South Carolina, the first state to announce its intention to leave the United States, has a slave population that represents 57% – an absolute majority – of the total residents of the state.  Mississippi, the second state to announce its intention to leave, has a slave population that represents 55% – also an absolute majority – of the total residents of its state.  The next four states to announce their intentions to leave were Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana.  Those states had slave populations as a percentage of their entire state of 44%, 45%, 44%, and 47%, respectively.  It is almost the case that the higher the slave population percentage, the sooner the state announced its intention to secede from the Union.  The other clue in Lincoln’s address was that one-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves.  Had the slaves been Irish or French, there probably would not have been a war.  It is very likely that the people of the South were less in love with the institution of slavery but more in favor of keeping the United States a white nation.  Had the slaves been white or some other non-black race, in the face of war, slavery may have ended sooner and without bloodshed.  Since the slaves were black (or “mulatto”) and clearly ethnically different from American whites, it would not have been in the interest of Southern planters to free those in bondage because it could have meant sharing or surrendering political power and resources with those easily identified as former slaves.  This may have led to intermarrying with individuals whose ethnic features would have been difficult to breed away.  Fearing the emergence of a “mongrel” race that could have real political and economic power was of concern to Americans, particularly those in the South.

Slavery ultimately became a tactic to control those of African descent in the (Southern) United States.  We know this because shortly after the war ended, Southern legislatures passed laws that were known as “Black Codes” and these laws were a tactic designed to control the conduct of those of African descent in the (Southern) United States.

The Reluctant Conservative believes that for the American South, secession and war were about race and national identity.  Since blacks were mostly localized in the southern part of the nation, Southerners were far more concerned about demographics than their northern counterparts.

On this 150^th anniversary of Secretary of State William Seward issuing a proclamation of the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, which extended the vote to former male slaves, it is worth revisiting how the amendment came to be.

President of the Divided States of America, Time Magazine said of Donald Trump, president-elect, when naming him Person of the Year in 2016.  It was a cheap shot.  I doubt that a newly elected Hillary Clinton would have been described that way had the election outcome been different.  Still, Time was on to something.  The country was divided.  While conservatives and many Republicans were happily surprised at the election results, much of the rest of the country felt various emotions from outrage to fear.  “Not My President” became the slogan of the Left.

Abraham Lincoln’s birthday is this week.  He was born 211 years ago.

When Lincoln was elected president, there were divisions in the nation.  The divisions were so intense, the country literally fell apart.  The typical voter who cast his ballot against Lincoln in 1860 viscerally felt that the first Republican elected to nation’s highest office was not my president.

Clearly, Trump and Lincoln presided over a politically divided nation.  I wondered though, are there other similarities between the two presidents?

One similarity is their use of tariffs.  Lincoln had been a member of the pro-tariff Whig Party before joining the newly formed Republican Party.  Trump has been vocal about tariffs for years prior to his running for president.  Both men can correctly be called protectionist.

Trump, during his two years in office, tended to allow Congress in take the lead in the policy-making arena.  The attempted repeal the Affordable Care Act and the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 are two examples of this.  Lincoln, appearing to adhere to Whig philosophy, believing in Congressional supremacy, deferred to national legislature in passing laws such as the Homestead Act of 1862 and the Land-Grant Act (also in 1862).  Both men respected the separation of powers.

One can even observe something somewhat less substantive in comparing the two men.  Both were very popular in West Virginia, each getting 68% of the vote.

There is one area where Lincoln and Trump can claim a meaningful contribution: the lives and aspirations of black Americans.

Lincoln’s record is well known to most Americans.  During the Civil War, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which, only formally, freed the slaves in rebel territory.  Lincoln also persuaded Congress to propose the Thirteenth Amendment, which, in fact, banned slavery in the nation.

Trump cannot yet claim anything quite that historic, but he has made a difference in the lives of blacks.  He increased funding to Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

Trump signed into law the prison reform called First Step Act, where over 90% of those freed under the act were black.  He signed an executive order that created a council within the White House to promote investment “opportunity zones” or economically distressed areas.  Trump has enforced laws against unlawful migration into the country, which has opened employment opportunities for black Americans.

Trump hired Betsy DeVos to lead the U.S. Department of Education.  A longtime advocate of expanding education opportunities for students in primary and secondary schools, including charters schools in Detroit, Secretary DeVos has spent her time in office promoting school choice options across the country.  A majority of blacks favor school choice programs.

Both Lincoln and Trump have been friends to black Americans.

Trump’s campaign theme was America First.  He announced his intention to pull the nation out of the Paris Agreement (climate change).  Trump withdrew America from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (trade).  He also persuaded NATO members to increase their defense spending.  Trump has acted in ways to place the interests of America first, not subordinate to the interests of other nations or foreign institutions.

Lincoln facing a secession crisis, prosecuted a war against the Southern states in rebellion.  It was the bloodiest war in U.S. history, but the union was restored.

While running for a second term, in August 1864 Lincoln issued a memorandum to his cabinet expressing concerns that the voters could make him a one-term president.  It went as follows:

“This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty to so cooperate with the President-elect as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured his election on such grounds that I cannot possibly save it afterwards.”

Lincoln’s plan can be summed up in two words: America First.

Trump rejects globalism if it imperils national sovereignty.  Lincoln rejected sectionalism when it imperiled the nation state.  Both men are nationalists.

Trump’s time in office is not over.  He still has work to do.  He must keep his promise to secure the Southern border and get the migration crisis under control; continue to nominate judges that respect the Constitution, including justices to the Supreme Court; and reduce the nation’s debt by limiting the scope and size of government, including reforming Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare.

If Trump accomplishes those things, he might get a ticket to Mount Rushmore.

First things first.  For Trump to be regarded as great, he must do one thing that Lincoln also managed to do: win reelection.

“The right to vote is the basic right without which all others are meaningless.”  This was especially true for those citizens, on whose behalf, the American people formally expanded and guaranteed access to the polls on this day 150 years ago.

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Happy 2020!