The Political Limitations of the Private Sector

 Kenneth Frazier, CEO, Merck; Brian Krzanich, CEO, Intel; Kevin Plank, CEO, Under Armour
resigned from Pres. Trump's Manufacturing Council in protest.

Recent news reports about Silicon Valley mega-corporations such as Pay Pal, Google, Facebook and Twitter banning conservatives from their services should give pause to GOP "thought leaders" who have argued that privatization is a panacea.

In fact, in the Trump Era, the time has come for a change of course by those fighting Political Correctness, to recognize that "a government of the people, by the people, and for the people" cannot be permitted to fall under the control of one political party indefinitely--and that GOP policies which enabled Democratic hegemony over the "permanent government" may have contributed to the current crisis of legitimacy.

If 50% of the population is not represented in the government workforce, then it cannot be said to be a representative government. Indeed, it is by definition unrepresentative--no matter that the elected officials sitting on top of the pyramid may differ. When Democratic Party civil servants openly announce their intention to "resist," then a constitutional crisis is inevitable.

Quite simply, no country can afford to have a political party which has been defeated at the ballot box in a position to determine the allocation of government goods and services to its opponents. It is not only undemocratic, it is a recipe for political corruption, chaos and abuses of the highest order.

However, in order to effectively combat this dangerous situation, the GOP must abandon its fetishistic commitment to "privatization" as the sole tool in their toolkit to deal with government issues.

It is quite clear that the Democratic party has corrupted a willing private sector to the point where American businesses now are more than happy to sacrifice markets, customers, and profits for Political Correctness--whether Merck, Intel, UnderArmour, Target, Apple, Google, Facebook, or Camping World, or dozens of others. 

This represents a fundamental and problematic change in prior business norms.

In the recent past--I taught in a business school for some 15 years--it was axiomatic that businesses should steer clear of politics to the maximum extent possible.

While individual business people were free to be political in their private lives, companies should try avoid political controversy--on the understanding that large numbers of customers disagreed about politics, so why risk losing sales?

However, this prior consensus obviously no longer applies.

Today, companies seemingly go out of their way to adopt controversial positions which alienate and even insult considerable segments of their customer base, with ostentatious "grandstanding" such as Merck's resignation from the President's Manufacturing Council, or Apple's $1 million donation to the SPLC. 

One should note that Steve Jobs did not believe in making any charitable donations, so Tim Cook's action is in direct contradiction to the business legacy of the company's founder, which I discussed in Corporate Social Responsibility and Its Discontents: Contradictions in ISO 26000: 2010 (August 15, 2014).

 1.   Steve Jobs & Apple—an anti-­‐CSR CEO of an anti-­‐CSR company. 

Walter Isaacson’s magisterial biography of Steve Jobs (2011) does not contain a single entry in the index under “Charity,” “CSR,” “Corporate Social Responsibility,” “Social,” or “Responsibility.” This is not surprising. Jobs did not believe in spending company money on charity. He was so Scrooge-­like that he did not pay dividends to stockholders. Job’s control-­freak style of management at Apple, and what Isaacson characterizes as his “nasty” and “mean” personality, enabled him take the company from one-­twentieth the value of Microsoft in 2000, to parity in 2010, to being worth 70% more than Microsoft in 2011—a year in which Mac’s market share grew by 28% as Microsoft’s shrank 1%. Yet no one can deny that Apple products have in fact added value to society.

Their user-­friendly, easy-­to-­use, and simple design made computing accessible to a wide range of people alienated by Microsoft’s difficult interface…and helped move computing from the corporate office to the individual home and pocket. This, in turn revived an endangered American electronics industry through the iPod, iPhone, iPad, and MacBook computers. Indeed, Isaacson called Jobs “the greatest business executive of our era, the one most certain to be remembered a century from now." 

One reason for Jobs’ success at Apple, is that rather than diverting attention and resources to CSR initiatives, Apple remained focused on its core business, and in Jobs’ own words, put “humanity into innovation.” Isaacson concluded Jobs’ focus was “to a create a company to last, not just to make money.” 

In putting his company first—above employees, customers, or society—Jobs exemplified [Milton] Friedman’s theory of the responsibility of the business executive. Did it lead to a successful business? Yes.

In other words, as Steve Jobs knew but Tim Cook does not, the proper business of business...is business.

That said, it would be remarkable if one could rely upon business to counter a determined political movement, especially as many of America's CEOs currently seem to follow the Chinese model, with the Democratic Party as the Communist Party, as explained in Bruce Dickson's Wealth into Power: The Communist Party's Embrace of China's Private Sector.

This would indicate that the traditional model that the GOP represents the private sector while the Democratic Party the public sector is in need of revision.

Indeed, with the government sector (federal, state & local) accounting for more than half of all jobs in the USA--more if one includes contracts and grants--the time has come for the Trump Administration to force pushback in the public sector.

Quite simply, the principle of representation and diversity must be expanded to promote inclusion of Republicans and Independents on the public payroll in proportion to the American population. What would that mean?

It would mean that the government workforce profile should be adjusted through goals, timetables and affirmative action programs to match Gallup survey results on political affiliation of the American public, the latest presented below:

In politics, as of today, do you consider yourself a Republican, a Democrat or an independent?

	Republicans	Independents	Democrats
	%	%	%
2017 Aug 2-6	28	41	28

Some things to note: (1) survey results do not match Congressional or Senate ratios, due to the systematic exclusion of independents from the political process; (2) Independents are the largest political group in the United States; (3) Pres. Trump owes his victory to Independents, many of them former Democrats; (4) the GOP does not have sufficient public support to govern without Independents--however, for the past 16 years they have been in a coalition with the Democrats instead, marginalizing the largest voting block in the country.


The explanation for this is probably simple greed. Making deals with Democrats--political opposites--allows for a roughly 50-50 split of the spoils, and permits a "coalition of the extremes against the middle" with a maximum return of investment. Were the GOP to ally with the middle-class ordinary American Independents, they would be a minority partner in the business.


This dynamic may explain establishment GOP politicians like Cong. Ryan's and Sen. McConnell's strange support for Antifa and other Democratic interests. One can assume that Pres. Trump is aware of his middle-class backing, but to share the wealth with Trump supporters, the GOP would have to become a junior partner to the more numerous Americans who support the President.


In other words, two minority parties--Democrats and the GOP--can rule over a larger population of Independents simply by horse-trading with one another and ignoring the excluded middle-class.


This could be countered by President Trump, if he manages to reduce popular support for both the establishment GOP and Democrats by 5% each in the next few years.


Such a strategy could call for running a large number of 3rd-party candidates in selected liberal districts, as well as primarying "Never Trumpers" in GOP strongholds. The goal would be to either bring the Independents into the GOP as "Trump Republicans" (like "Reagan Democrats"), making the party more representative, or laying the groundwork for a Third Party such as the one which replaced the Whigs, or Theodore Roosevelt's Bull Moose Party.


At a minimum, this means that the current GOP marriage to the private sector--especially now openly hostile corporate CEOs--must be dissolved and replaced with a marriage with the broad majority of American people, a marriage which would include government jobs as part of the pre-nup...something Pres. Trump could probably negotiate.

Duck Duck Go Search Engine Link

https://duckduckgo.com

James Damore WeSearchr Fundraiser

https://www.wesearchr.com/bounties/james-damore-official-fundraiser

A New Browser: BRAVE

https://brave.com/about/

I've been using BRAVE for a day or so, and have found it very easy to use, so bye-bye Chrome & Safari...

Thank you Mr. Eich!

James Damore Interviewed by Jordan Peterson

James Damore Interviewed by Stephan Molyneaux

Two, Three, Many Galileos...

Aug. 10, 2017 UPDATE: James Damore was indeed fired by the Google Inquisition, subsequent to publication of this post on August 7th:

  I could recount what I have seen and heard in other Countries, where this kind of inquisition tyrannizes; when I have sat among their lernedmen, for that honor I had, and bin counted happy to be born in such a place of Philosophic freedom, as they suppos'd England was, while themselvs did nothing but bemoan the servil condition into which lerning amongst them was brought; that this was it which had dampt the glory of Italian wits; that nothing had bin there writt'n now these many years but flattery and fustian. There it was that I found and visited the famous Galileo grown old, a prisnerto the Inquisition, for thinking in Astronomy otherwise then the Franciscan and Dominican licencers thought. And though I knew that England then was groaning loudest under the Prelaticall yoak, neverthelesse I took it as a pledge of future happines, that other Nations were so perswaded of her liberty. 

                                                            --Milton, Areopagitica (1644)

Recently, I saw a production of James Reston, Jr.'s play Galileo's Torch at late Maestro Lorin Maazel's Castleton Theatre, directed by Maazel's widow, Dietelinde. 

In writing his earlier biography of the Italian astronomer and physicist persecuted by the Inquisition, Reston had discovered actual Vatican Library transcripts of Galileo's interrogation by the Grand Inquisitor. These documents were so powerful that the playwright, son of the namesake New York Times columnist and Washington Bureau Chief, felt compelled to dramatize the confrontation between reason and faith on stage.  

Reston's play has been performed sporadically since its premiere in 2014, and although not quite Bertolt Brecht's Life of Galileo, it offers much food for thought today, as Political Correctness has come to dominate so much of contemporary institutional discourse in the arts, humanities, and sciences.  A new Inquisition can be found among diversity and compliance officers ready to sanction the slightest offense against the Catechism of Diversity, which has come to dominate, destroy, and suppress free inquiry much as the Catholic Church's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which also was central to Brecht's 1943 play.  

This is the dilemma at the heart of both dramas: What happens when a person makes a discovery that undermines the established order? 

Does he persist, confront authority, and possibly perish...or does he recant, apologize, and survive?  

Reston's play brought to mind some contemporary high-profile heresy cases, where to be fair the issue was losing a job rather than losing a life, but still shocking--such as the firing of Lawrence Summers from his post as Harvard University President, for saying that women have lower math scores than men; the ousting of Nobel-prize winning scientist Tim Hunt, for making a joke about women in the lab (he had married one); the forced resignation of Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich, after he was outed for opposition to same-sex marriage, among others. Not to mention violent riots on American campuses when outspoken outsiders like Charles Murray, Ann Coulter, or Milo Yiannopolous attempt to speak.

Reston's play seemed old-fashioned in its commitment to the rights of the truth-teller, rather than the duties of the Inquisitor.

Life imitating art came the case of James Damore, a Google employee who sent out an anonymous memo--headlined "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber" and known as #GoogleManifesto among opponents, or #googlememo among defenders--questioning the rationale for diversity hires in the high-tech company, arguing that group sex differences in engineering aptitude were primarily due to biology and so impervious to social remediation. The resulting firestorm was immediate.

Damore was denounced by the company's Diversity and Compliance officer, he was outed although he wished to remain anonymous (itself damning evidence of a climate of fear within the company), and online commenters inside and outside the company not only called for firing, but also for physical violence to be perpetrated against him.

It turned out that the author of the Google Memo is a scientist who knows a great deal about biology, because studied for a Ph.D. at Harvard University and has published scientific research papers in his field. By any normal standard, that alone would entitle his stated position to respectful consideration and discussion--especially in a company of scientists and engineers, dedicated to "Search," where the company motto still is "Don't Be Evil."

Instead, the response has been positively medieval. Google VP Danielle Brown officially condemned Damore's expression of his views, in a memo quoting another Google VP, Ari Balogh. The statement essentially declares company policy to be Holy Writ not subject to doubt or refutation (by definition an unscientific position under Karl Popper's "falsifiability" hypothesis, as stated in Science and Falsification): 

Diversity and inclusion are a fundamental part of our values and the culture we continue to cultivate. We are unequivocal in our belief that diversity and inclusion are critical to our success as a company, and we’ll continue to stand for that and be committed to it for the long haul. As Ari Balogh said in his internal G+ post, “Building an open, inclusive environment is core to who we are, and the right thing to do. ‘Nuff said.”

Thus, an official statement of Google puts the issue of Diversity beyond the scope of scientific inquiry--which makes it into religious dogma, in a philosophical sense. So has a company founded by skeptical scientists and engineers, heirs to Galileo, been converted into a Church of Political Correctness by a corporate commitment to unscientific concepts such as "Diversity and inclusion."

Whether James Damore will eventually lose his job and fall victim to Danielle Brown's Google Inquisition has yet to be determined. But it is obvious from the Google Memo affair that today's corporate management is no less evil than the Grand Inquisitor was in the time of Galileo, suppressing scientific truth to preserve religious dogma...for, as Brecht and Reston show, the Catholic Church, like Google management, also thought God was on their side.

Nice Review of THE TRUMP EFFECT: DEPROGRAMMING THE AMERICAN MIND in Frontpagemag.com...

Just had to share this review with my readers...

MARK TAPSON, FrontpageMag.com, July 28, 2017

Six months into the Trump presidency, it seems safe to say that America has never had a political experience like the one he has brought to the White House. He has sparked a stark raving mad #resistance from the left that makes Bush Derangement Syndrome look fair and balanced. The news media hang on his every tweet. Hollywood is practically self-combusting in panic and disbelief. Climate change Cassandras are melting down. Illegal aliens are feeling the heat as well. He has even thrown his own party into turmoil. All of this hysterical disarray has resulted from the impact not of a movement or a Party, but of one man, Donald Trump.

Now a new documentary offers some thoughtful commentary on President Trump’s agitating arrival on the political scene. Produced, directed and edited by Agustin Blazquez, The Trump Effect: Deprogramming the American Mind features author and filmmaker Laurence Jarvik musing upon the rise of Trump and how this iconoclastic President is changing the way Americans think about ourselves and the world. Over the course of an hour of discussion, Jarvik’s primary thesis is that Trump is dismantling the politically correct ideology that has dominated American political discourse since 9/11, which will lead the way to a newfound freedom and unification of a country on its way to becoming great again....

For more, click here: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/267410/trump-effect-mark-tapson

I'm interviewed in Agustin Blazquez's new unauthorized feature documentary about President Donald J. Trump...

Watch THE TRUMP EFFECT: Deprogramming the American Mind, A Film by Agustin Blazquez on YouTube. Click here for full movie: https://youtu.be/FmhfRi5j8aA.

Today's "Piss Christ" is the Assassination of Donald Trump in Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar"

UPDATE: July 24, 2017--I forgot that I published this article about PBS attacking Steve Bannon earlier, shameful of GOP to reward PBS for doing it, imho: https://laurencejarvikonline.blogspot.com/2016/11/public-broadcasting-v-steve-bannon.html

UPDATE: July 21, 2017--Incredibly, House & Senate Republicans apparently are not significantly cutting NEA  appropriations after NEA-funded venues agitated for assassination of President Trump, among other things, according to today's press reports. Makes no sense as prior Congresses passed big cuts and felt no penalty at the ballot box. In addition, in my opinion every penny given to NEA, NEH, PBS, NPR & Pacifica is used to oppose, defeat, undermine, and discredit the GOP. Why would a political party in its right mind fund its own opposition? Have Republican Senators & Congressmen never heard the saying: "The Pen is Mightier than the Sword?" Finally, it depresses support from those who see politicians breaking an easy to fulfill, no-brainer, low-cost campaign promise--VERY BAD LEGISLATION!

"Yes, I was a card-carrying Communist. I was a member of the party until Peggy and I got married, and she convinced me that it was stupid to belong any longer."
"...and in 1958 he was hauled before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, where he denied being a Communist after 1955. (He refused to discuss his activities before that time.)"
-- Kenneth Turan, FREE FOR ALL: JOE PAPP, THE PUBLIC, AND THE GREATEST THEATER STORY EVER TOLD 

It cannot come as a surprise that the latest controversy over artistic politics has taken place at New York's Delacorte Theater, where a Shakespeare in the Park production recently featured a Donald Trump look-alike being graphically stabbed to death.  For Shakespeare in the Park is produced by New York's Public Theater, which was founded by Joseph Papp,  who never abandoned his political commitment to Leftist politics, a theatrical tradition continued by current artistic director Oskar Eustis.

Thus, a published statement about the controversy rings as hollow as a speech by Polonius, especially since the company had audience member Laura Loomer arrested for expressing her dissent in truly Shakespearean fashion, by heckling a performance, long a tradition in theatre, as The Guardian has noted:

Prior to the 19th century, though, heckling was as much part of the theatregoing experience as it is in standup comedy today. Audiences in Shakespeare's day would have been vocal in their pleasure (and displeasure), while Drury Lane audiences in the 18th century were perfectly capable of hissing actors they didn't like off the stage. Despite the regular complaints of disruptive mobile phones and audiences who text or talk their through shows, no 21st-century British theatre audience would boo for 10 minutes, as people did after the premiere of Noël Coward's Sirocco in 1927.

And heckling was a normal part of theater-going in Elizabethan London, according to experts:

Shakespeare's audience was far more boisterous than are patrons of the theatre today. They were loud and hot-tempered and as interested in the happenings off stage as on. One of Shakespeare's contemporaries noted that "you will see such heaving and shoving, such itching and shouldering to sit by the women, such care for their garments that they be not trod on . . . such toying, such smiling, such winking, such manning them home ... that it is a right comedy to mark their behaviour" (Stephen Gosson, The School of Abuse, 1579). The nasty hecklers and gangs of riffraff would come from seedy parts in and around London like Tower-hill and Limehouse and Shakespeare made sure to point them out:

These are the youths that thunder at a playhouse,
and fight for bitten apples; that no audience, but
the Tribulation of Tower-hill, or the Limbs of
Limehouse, their dear brothers, are able to endure.
(Henry VIII, 5.4) 

However, instead of incorporating Loomer's heckling into the performance and making it part of the discourse, perhaps responding with theatrical ad-libs, Eustis brought the "discussion" to an end in a decidedly Stalinist manner, by having Loomer arrested and taken to the Central Park Jail.



Somehow, that doesn't seem in keeping with Hamlet's own instructions to his players:

Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature. For anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing...

(Hamlet, 3.2) 

Yet, like Stalin himself assuring Westerners that all was well in the former Soviet Union, Eustis claimed to welcome discussion rhetorically, while simultaneously suppressing it by his actions:

Our production of JULIUS CAESAR in no way advocates violence towards anyone. Shakespeare's play, and our production, make the opposite point: those who attempt to defend democracy by undemocratic means pay a terrible price and destroy the very thing they are fighting to save. For over 400 years, Shakespeare’s play has told this story and we are proud to be telling it again in Central Park.  

The Public Theater stands completely behind our production of JULIUS CAESAR.  We understand and respect the right of our sponsors and supporters to allocate their funding in line with their own values.  We recognize that our interpretation of the play has provoked heated discussion; audiences, sponsors and supporters have expressed varying viewpoints and opinions. 
Such discussion is exactly the goal of our civically-engaged theater; this discourse is the basis of a healthy democracy. 
 #WeAreOnePublic

His transparently agitprop production exposed for the incitment it was, director Oskar Eustis brazenly quoted Hamlet about "holding a mirror up to nature" (while signaling his Leftist politics by apologizing for "use of the male pronoun") in a YouTube video also on the website: 

Just as one doesn't need to be a Weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing, one doesn't need to be a theatre critic in order to recognize a Politically Correct production, especially since director Eustis also produced Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton at the Public Theater, comparing him to Shakespeare: 

Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton cast heckled the audience, when they hectored and bullied Vice President Mike Pence from the stage when he was sitting quietly in his seat, with an actor delivering a Soviet-style denunciation of a Politically Incorrect member of the public who dared to attend the show: 

Like Eustis said, "those who attempt to defend democracy by undemocratic means pay a terrible price and destroy the very thing they are fighting to save." In time, perhaps Eustis may come to regret his bloody dispatch of the theatrical Trump in his Shakespeare in the Park's production of Julius Caesar. As the Bard prophesied:

Bloody thou art; bloody will be thy end. (Richard III, 4.4)

Shakespearean struggles have taken a toll on cultural institutions before, in New York City, in Manhattan, on Astor Place, once upon a time site of the fabled Astor Place Opera House--now gone forever as a result of the Astor Place Riot of May 10, 1849.

That conflict over the politics of Shakespeare left some 25 dead and over 100 wounded, and led to the closing of what became known the "Massacre Opera House" on "DisAstor Place"--the street Oskar Eustis's Public Theater now calls home.


In conclusion, Eustis might note that The Corcoran Gallery of Art is no more, perhaps because of the undemocratic way it handled the1990s controversy over Robert Mapplethorpe's photos and Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ." The Corcoran was dissolved in 2014, although its building was worth some $200 million and its art collection valued at $2 billion.  If Eustis, Shakespeare in the Park, and the cast of Hamilton continue their efforts to undo the election results of 2016, New York's Public Theater might share the same fate as The Corcoran. For, as Shakespeare pointed out,:

What's past is prologue. (The Tempest, 2.1)

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David Garrow's RISING STAR: The Making of Barack Obama is a Great Political Biography

David J. Garrow's Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama (William Morrow, 2017) is a fascinating book. Although exceedingly long, over 1000 pages of text plus hundreds of pages of footnotes, filled with numerous details of names, places and events, I never felt that the author had provided TMI (Too Much Information). After reading Rising Star, for the first time, I felt that I finally understood how and why Barack Obama became President of the United States, who he was, and why things subsequently turned out the way that they did.

Although in some respects the biography reads like a phone book, it is a fascinating phone book--full of the kind of details that had been pretty much denied to all but the closest insiders in the Obama Administration.

It seemed strange, living in Washington, that one read so little about President Obama's inner circle, while he was in power. Garrow makes clear that this was by design, that the construction and preservation of "The Narrative" by Obama and his team was of the utmost importance. The messy details of Obama's life would not help in his quest to become the first African-American President of the United States of America, and so would be replaced by a Parson Weems-like story that seemed too good to be true--because it was. This was the "fairy-tale" to which President William Jefferson Clinton referred in 2008...a dream which came true because Americans wanted to believe in the angels of  our better nature.

In the end, Rising Star is a deeply reassuring book. Running as an outsider, indeed striking many of the same themes Trump used in 2016, Barack Obama claimed to want to bring American's together, to heal divisions, to oppose tribalism and racial strife, thereby to patriotically lead the country to "a more perfect Union" because there were no "red states, or blue states" just the United States of America. He claimed to want to bring back jobs, to have been against the war in Iraq, to disarm Iran, even to support a united Jerusalem under Israeli control.

If these seem to be the road not taken in the end, other concerns dating from his first run for Illinois State Senate made their way with him to the White House--support for universal health care became law as Obamacare; drug penalties were reduced; police were reined in (Obama had received a number of speeding tickets and was particularly sensitive to the issue of "Driving While Black"); attempts at gun control were made; troops were withdrawn from Iraq; and money flowed to non-profit organizations such as the ones which launched his political career.

Most importantly, Obama's sense of destiny was clearly fulfilled in his behavior as a husband and father while serving as U.S. President. Unlike Bill Clinton, he did nothing in his marriage to publicly embarrass his wife, children, or the nation. Garrow's book makes it perfectly clear that this was in reaction to his own father's lack of personal responsibility and also to serve as a conscious role model for other African-Americans. If nothing else, one can say that President Obama succeeded as a family  man in ways that Bill Clinton could not.

Perhaps most striking is Garrow's contention that Obama chose to self-identify as Black when he could have chosen another path due to his elite status and multi-racial heritage. On one level, Garrow seems to argue that this was a matter of political calculation--concluding that had Obama married his Asian-American girlfriend, he could not have been elected President, because African-American voters would have disapproved of the marriage. Although hypothetical, thus impossible to prove or disprove, it is clear from Garrow's biography that Michelle Obama was perhaps even more popular than Barack, although he continually states that she hated politics and just wanted him to take a high-paying job. Michelle also had strong personal ties to Chicago's African-American community, and at one point Garrow says she "almost grew up in Jesse Jackson's house."

There are so many intricate details in the book that one really has to read it for oneself, but among the many explanations, the map of African-American Chicago politics is particularly compelling...especially the focus on what many felt was Obama's betrayal of Alice Palmer, a move which began Obama's rise through the ranks. Like a character in Shakespearean drama, that first act of treachery demonstrated that Obama possessed the ruthlessness and determination which would take him to the White House, leaving others in his dust.

Garrow's depiction of the world of Cong. Bobby Rush, Jesse Jackson, Cong. Jesse Jackson, Jr. Rev. Louis Farrakhan, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Carol Moseley Braun, and Mayor Harold Washington, among others, is perhaps the definitive portrait of Chicago's African-American Establishment.  I had no idea that Tony Rezko was in business with Rev. Farrakhan until reading this book. All that one can say is: "So, that's how it works!"

Springfield, Illinois is in fact as dreary as Garrow says. I've been there.

Likewise, he illuminates Chicago Hyde Park progressives and a complementary universe centered around the dinner table of Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, where Barack and Michelle oft supped and plotted. The Bard of Avon himself could not dream up the world of intrigue surrounding the  non-profit foundations, charities, universities involved in what come across as self-dealing schemes of personal enrichment and power concentration involving moguls, millionaires, corporations and foundations.  Particularly compelling are Garrow's discussion of Obama's partnership with Ayers in a $49 million Annenberg Foundation grant to improve education which produced no measurable results, as well as an attempted $25 million Waste Management Incorporated scheme to pave the way for a toxic waste dump that grew so complicated that it fell apart from its own intrigue. In addition, Garrow details how Obama's experience with Project VOTE informed the use of voter registration regulations as a technique to eliminate opponents such as Alice Palmer.

He puts the lie to right-wing sneers that Obama had done nothing as a community organizer that would prepare him for the Presidency. Rather, Garrow shows that Obama's experience among the non-profiteers, beginning as a PIRG organizer at the City University of New York, was central to his ability to win the White House--because the money and personnel in the world of NGOs fueled his career as much as Boss Pendergast's Kansas City Machine did Harry S. Truman's.

Which brings us to Mayor Daley. I had forgotten that Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod both worked for Mayor Daley... The Daley Machine, according to Garrow, early on feared that Obama was so formidable that he might run for Mayor. So, Daley encouraged him to run for Senate and eventually President--to get him out of town... So connected is Obama to the machine that no Illinois Republican would run against him for US Senate after Jack Ryan dropped out following release of embarrassing divorce documents. The Illinois GOP brought in Alan Keyes from out-of-state, a carpetbagger candidate who had lost twice running in Maryland. Keyes then lost a bitter and personal campaign to Obama, getting into a shouting match at an Indian-American parade ("No-Drama Obama" completely lost his cool according to Garrow), then bitterly refused to concede on election night.

In addition, Garrow's discussion of Harvard Law School is just fascinating. After reading about the Harvard Law Review, one gets the impression that there is no law at Harvard. He quotes Obama, as editor, telling his subordinates not to worry about the articles, because "nobody reads it." The internal struggles over affirmative action are shocking to read about, and one eventually comes to the conclusion that conservatives have become just another special-interest group looking for a minority set-aside on the Law Review. There is almost no discussion of legal substance, at least reported by Garrow. I almost laughed out loud at Garrow's account of Lawrence Tribe's article on the physics of law (at least I think that was his topic). The great legal minds of Harvard look like mental midgets after Garrow gets through with them. Rather than providing a legal education, Garrow's Harvard teaches mafia tactics of self-advancement. Surely there is more to it than that, but anyone wondering about the identity politics destroying universities, if not the country, today can find plenty of the same at the Harvard Law Review during Obama's tenure as editor in Garrow's account.

What's past was truly prologue...

I used to live on W. 110th Street, one block from Obama's New York City apartment on W. 109th Street, so enjoyed Garrow's description of life in the neighborhood of Columbia University. Most notable was the jet-set lifestyle Obama seemed to enjoy, flying to Hawaii, Europe, and Pakistan among other places. Garrow's point is that Obama could have continued in this vein, becoming an international type working at the UN or similar organization...but he made a choice, a choice to move to Chicago and the African-American experience.

In exchange, he gave up his girlfriends, his lifestyle, and his literary pretentions--Garrow says the young Obama said he wanted to be a "writer." The road not taken would have been a very different one, though Garrow's Obama is so driven that there can be no doubt that he would succeed at anything he tried. But to become Ta-Nahesi Coates was not Barack Obama's destiny.

Strikingly, despite a critical attitude towards Obama's ruthlessness, Garrow makes clear that Obama had a keen sense of destiny from an early age. To illustrate this, he focuses on Obama's breakup with Sheila Miyoshi Jager, his girlfriend before he married Michelle Robinson. In contrast to what he describes as an almost arranged marriage with Michelle, Garrow portrays Obama's relationship with Jager as a passionate and tempestuous romance, in defiance of both his and her families. She even followed him to Harvard Law School. But Obama chose his deeply felt destiny over the pleasures of romantic love, at least in Garrow's version, and so dropped her.

In conclusion, I was struck by some parallels to Trump. Like Trump, Obama took on the party favorite, Hillary Clinton, and won the Presidency. Like Trump, he ran as an outsider. Like Trump, he promised to change the way Washington worked. But unlike Trump, Obama received support from the Establishment at every step of the way. From the Punahou School to Columbia to Harvard to the University of Chicago to the Board of the Woods Foundation to the Illinois Senate to the US Senate to the White House, Obama played an "inside-outside" game dependent on the support of the powers-that-be. In the end, Obama is a surfer who rode the waves of history to achieve his destiny.

Rising Star makes clear that Obama never had a serious opponent in any political race until he ran for President, because he knew how to work the system to his advantage. Hillary and Obama were two Establishmentarians, one fresh-faced and the other old and tired. Youth won the day.

In fact, like his predecessor George W. Bush, Barack Obama was a Legacy admission to an Ivy League School -- he told his friends at the time he applied that he would go to Harvard Law School despite scholarship offers from Northwestern because his father went to Harvard. He was editor of the Harvard Law Review and a professor at the University of Chicago. He was a published author. He served on boards and was a member of Harvard's Suguaro Seminar (apparently some sort of domestic Son of the Trilateral Commission to develop leaders).

After reading Garrow's account, the meaning of President Obama's July 13th, 2012 campaign speech became crystal clear--he was talking about himself, and describing the arc of his career:

...look, if you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own. You didn't get there on your own. I'm always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something – there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Applause.)

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business – you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen.

David J. Garrow's Rising Star tells us the names of the somebodies who made it happen for Barack Obama, how and why they did it, and what was in it for them.  So, add Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama to the list of great political biographies, alongside works like Robert Caro's The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York-- according to Garrow, one of President Obama's favorite books.

Banned in Berkeley! Free Speech After the Ann Coulter Affair

On April 27th, 2017, Ann Coulter did not give a speech at the University of California, Berkeley. Nor did she appear at a rally of her supporters at Berkeley’s Civic Center Park, despite prior statements teasingly suggesting a promise of her appearance, such as: 

“I’m not speaking. But I’m going to be near there, so I might swing by to say hello to my supporters who have flown in from all around the country...I thought I might stroll around the graveyard of the First Amendment.”

However, as ABC News reported: "Coulter had publicly floated the idea of making a controversial visit to Berkeley despite the cancellation, but did not show."

Jack Kerwick, on Townhall.com publicly shared his feelings of disappointment following Coulter's disappearing act, 

For some reason (I will proffer my theory as to why this is at a later time), no one in official “conservative-dom” has devoted any coverage to what the internet now hails as “the Battle for Berkeley.”

Nor has anyone, including Ann Coulter herself, mentioned that lots of men are planning on descending upon Berkeley once again to protect her. The Oath Keepers—retired law enforcement officers and military veterans; Civil Defense Action; the Three Percenters; Bikers for Trump; and the Proud Boys—these are some of the groups that helped numerous other patriots, like the overnight internet sensation, “the Based Stickman,” rid Berkeley of “anti-fa” terrorists on April 15. They have been busy recruiting supports for Ann’s speech. One quite famous Youtube personality claimed to have offered $1,000 to each person who traveled to Berkeley to greet Ann and meet head-on the terrorists.

Then Ann cancelled.

We can't know everything that goes on behind he scenes, and there may be a better explanation, but at this point it looks like Ann lost her nerve when faced with the possibility of a Milo Yiannopoulos-style riot. 

That may have seemed like a good call, as the College Republicans and YAF had withdrawn their official invitations. However, from reading press accounts, there were clearly students interested in her message--and interested in standing up to the Antifa Bullies of Berkeley--such as Kiara Robles, a Trump-supporting victim of mob violence at Milo's event: 

The Washington Post reported:

Kiara Robles, a 26-year-old gay Trump supporter who works at a bitcoin company, said she was disappointed to be attending a rally instead of a Coulter speech.

Subsequently, one of my friends told me that he would never buy another Ann Coulter book again-- because she didn't have the guts to show up after telling TV audiences that she'd talk into a megaphone if necessary on April 27th. 

Personally, I'd buy another book if Ann provided a reasonable explanation for disappointing supporters at crunch time. 

However, until then,  I'd have to say that her non-appearance actually was a defeat for the First Amendment, for Free Speech, and for the rights of Trump-supporters, conservatives, libertarians, independents, and even the non-politically inclined.

In my opinion, the denoument of Coulter's Berkeley affair demonstrated that Republicans and Conservatives just will not stand up for their principles, when push literally comes to shove. 

Further, Coulter's public climbdown emboldened Democrats and Leftists to openly declare their opposition to Free Speech, something that I had not heard from a former Presidential candidate, DNC Chair, and State governor before--Howard Dean's declaration that:

Hate speech is not protected by the first amendment.

and 

This is NOT protected speech under the first amendment. Check Chaplinsky V New Hampshire SCOTUS 1942.

Although other Democrats including President Obama and media figures paid lip service to Coulter's rights at Berkeley, once the issue was moot, in my opinion Howard Dean's remarks represent the reality--the opening of an Overton Window to the criminalization of dissent in the United States. 

College campuses can be seen as a testing ground for this policy--and a highly successful test it has been to date. The banning of Coulter, Horowitz and Milo from Berkeley represents the next stage in "repressive intolerance," to paraphrase Herbert Marcuse.

Once upon a time, the college campus was a place for the robust exploration of diverse points of view, and the Liberal Arts were designed to teach free individuals the arts of liberty. Indeed, prior to the Free Speech Movements, in order to protect democratic debate, totalitarians such as Communists were banned from campus. The unrest of the 1960s changed that, opening universities to fanatical speakers of varying stripes. The next stage systematically eliminated non-Leftist faculty members in the once Liberal Arts, using a variety of techniques, even changing the name of the field of inquiry to the more scientific-sounding "Humanities." A system of bureaucratic and ideological obstacles was established which prevented non-Leftists from entering the academy as faculty members. The official curriculum was transformed into something resembling that of a Higher Party School in the former Soviet Union, especially following Jesse Jackson's 1987 visit to Stanford to lead a crowd to chant:

"Hey, hey, ho, ho! Western culture's got to go!"

However, at least until 2017, Conservatives, Republicans, and others had been permitted to give lectures to students as visiting guest speakers. No more.

The Coulter affair, it seems to me, signals that era has ended. From now on, any non-PC speaker is at risk in an unsafe, hostile environment. Furthermore, they are not protected either by the 1st or 14th Amendment, because their views have been declared "beyond the pale."

While ordinary people still clearly support Free Speech, the weakness and irresolution of the GOP, their refusal to fight, and the abandonment of the field in Berkeley to the enemies of Civilization by all concerned.

This concerns me on a personal level, for as a UC Berkeley alumnus I studied Philosophy at a time when dissenting opinions were welcomed at Cal--John Searle and Paul Feyerabend, among others, were on the faculty and certainly did not follow the Party Line. At the time the UC Berkeley motto, "Let There Be Light," seemed a meaningful statement of the Enlightenment project of the University.

It also affects me as one who later worked for David Horowitz and with Ann Coulter when she was an aide to former Sen. Spencer Abraham (R-MI).

It is not a matter of "cowardly administrators" or "snowflakes." University administrators are objectively supporting PC campus censors, they are with them, not against them, and should not be allowed to hide behind the excuse of cowardice--they are not afraid to denounce President Trump, for example...and likewise, so-called "snowflakes" are manifestly little more than grievance collectors filing false charges to defame and intimate their non-PC victims--using campus regulations that may themselves be unconstitutional violations of the 14th and First Amendments.

As one may see from political deployment of charges of "sexual harassment" since the Clarence Thomas hearings, unless the GOP and the Trump Administration take very seriously indeed the threat to free speech and free inquiry on PC American college campuses, the time may not be far off when simply being a Republican, Libertarian--or even an Independent--becomes punishable under law as a "hate crime."

And that really would mean, "¡Adiós, America!"

Memo to Congress: Go Ahead and Kill Big Bird!

While conservative commentators such as Brent Bozell & Tim Graham , Joel Pollak and Tammy Bruce  have rallied around President Trump's call to de-fund federal cultural agencies such as PBS, NPR, and the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities, the "organs" have predictably begun their illegal scare campaigns for funding, by threatening to "kill Big Bird".

Twenty years ago I worked on this issue for the Heritage Foundation and David Horowitz, and discovered that although PBS, NPR and the cultural agencies spent much of their time and money attacking the GOP, they were protected by Republicans from budget cuts. Indeed, after Congress "zeroed-out" funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, the Senate restored it in conference--despite the "Piss Christ" fiasco

Now, twenty year later, arguments made on behalf of the cultural agencies in the 1990s are revealed to have been hollow lies. Free speech? Not so much...the NEA for some reason never funded an exhibition featuring a photograph titled "Piss Mohammed." Non-Commercial? Again, not so much, as the Muppets are owned by Disney and Sesame Street airs on HBO. Providing resources not available elsewhere? Nope. YouTube, Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, Pandora, Spotify, iTunes, and podcasts of all kinds  provide free or low-cost educational programming that once was the purview of PBS. Current affairs? Sorry, Charlie, the American public has access via C-Span and a plethora of online public service options dedicated to everything from city council meetings to university lectures. Education? Available free from EdX, Coursera, OpenCulture, Harvard's Open Learning Initiative, and dozens of other providers. Children's programming? Any iPad has more educational software available than your local PBS station.

So, what do PBS, NPR and the cultural agencies provide that can't be found elsewhere? The answer is simple: political propaganda of a predictably progressive tilt, combined with lucrative paydays for politically-correct and politically-connected cadre...all wrapped in a package with British sitcoms, antiques shows, and costume dramas -- now available directly from the BBC and ITV on Britbox.com.

Add to this the realization that in some 50 years of broadcasting, Sesame Street has not eliminated the achievement gap in education--its declared purpose as a Great Society Program--there is simply no rationale other than interest group politics for the continuation of federal funding. Sesame Street may be a great business success at selling toys and other merchandise, but it has clearly and demonstrably failed in its educational mission aimed at the underprivileged.

Sadly, the impact of the twin Endowments since the GOP saved them from extinction in the 1990s has been to further the transformation of the art world and humanities into Politically Correct wastelands, phenomena documented extensively by authors like Bruce Bawer and Roger Kimball.

Bottom line: In the past 20 years, American culture has gone from bad to worse, thanks in no small part to the record of federal cultural agencies saved by the GOP in the 1990s. To begin a turnaround around, start by cutting off funding to the CPB (PBS, NPR & Pacifica), NEA & NEH, to send a strong signal that the new Administration is serious about change.  Far from fearing the charge of killing Big Bird, Republicans should embrace it, as an example of Schumpeterian "creative destruction," in order to make room for something better.

Kill Big Bird?

Go ahead, make my day.

Hillary Clinton's Fingerprints Evident on Russian Hacking Charges...

Visiting the International Spy Museum bookshop in Washington, DC a while ago, a paperback on one of the tables caught my eye. It was titled: The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and Wikileaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election. Author Malcolm Nance is a career intelligence agent who has written for The Huffington Post and heads an organization called TAPSTRI: The Terror Asymmetrics Project on Strategy, Tactics & Radical Ideology. His book was published in October 2016, before current headlines charging Russian hacking on behalf of the Trump campaign, indeed before the victor of the 2017 election had been decided. That was curious. How come I haven't seen this book mentioned in press coverage of President-Elect Trump?

I didn't read the book, I confess, but judged it by the cover, and after a quick flip of the pages decided it resembled a file produced for Hillary Clinton in another era:  Chris Lehane's "Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy" memo (originally called the "Communication Stream of Conspiracy Commerce"), which appeared during the Monica Lewinsky scandal in 1995 to discredit critics of President Clinton.

Which is to say, even without reading it, Hillary Clinton's fingerprints were all over Russian Hacking allegations, because it fit her M.O. during the Impeachment of President Clinton, a conspiratorial--dare one say Nixonian--world view in which dark forces were conspiring to undermine her. They were out to get the Democratic Nominee...

The Russia Card is America's Trump Card

Opponents of President Trump have forced the resignation of General Mike Flynn as President Trump's National Security Advisor--by playing the Russia Card.

It is the second time Russian connections have led to a resignation of a top Trump official, since Russian intrigues brought down Paul Manafort as campaign chairman shortly after Trump had secured the Republican nomination for President.

It looks like history has repeated itself.

However, the Russia Card cannot be understood out of context. In fact, the Russia Card is about more than Russia--for it is also the flip side of the Muslim Card, which Trump deployed against Hillary Clinton and President Obama.

Interestingly, Russophobes also tend to oppose Trump's travel ban, "extreme vetting," and efforts to add the Muslim Brotherhood to the list of terrorist organizations. Likewise, they expressed little public objection to the foreign connections Huma Abedin, whose parents were active in the Muslim Brotherhood, and had alleged links to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, serving as a top aide to Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, nor to the Clinton Foundations ties to repressive Islamist regimes. Nor did they object when the so-called "Arab Spring" installed Islamist governments in the Middle East.

This is not a double standard, because it is a single standard, indeed an Islamist standard--because Russia has been at war with Islamic fundamentalists since at least the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Although Islam is one of the officially recognized religions of Russia, some would say the history of Russia has been one of confrontation with Islam since the conquest of Persia in 651. In the 19th Century Tolstoy wrote about fighting Chechens in Haji Murad. They are still fighting Chechens today.

Islamist supporters play the Russian Card like this: Unable to directly defend Islamic terrorism, ISIS, or unlimited Muslim immigration to the United States, they choose to attack Russia to achieve the same ends, playing on ancient--and I believe obsolete and inappropriate--grievances.

They take advantage of lingering resentments among Republicans who are still anti-Russian because Russia was once Communist. When these Republicans see Putin, they see him a Communist commissar, a former KGB officer,  a "thug." When they see Russia, they see it as if it were still the Soviet Union--even though Russia voluntarily withdrew from its former Soviet satellites, allowed some of them to join the EU, and dissolved the USSR.

On the other side, leftist Democrats have lingering resentments that Russia rejected Communism. They are as strongly hostile to Putin as Stalin was anti-Trotsky. When they look at Putin, they see a turncoat KGB agent who sold out to capitalism, suppresses LGBT causes on behalf of Russian Orthodoxy, and who encourages the very Russian nationalism that the USSR suppressed with its "Friendship of Peoples" doctrine (Soviet multiculturalism), therefore another kind of "thug" (like Cuba calls its refugees from Communism "gusanos"--worms).

As a result Russia experiences significant enmity from both the Right and the Left sides of the American political spectrum.

Similarly, Right-wingers don't credit Russia for its support of American troops in Afghanistan, for Putin's crushing the Communist Party, or for co-operation in fighting terror--including unheeded warnings about the Boston Marathon bombers. And Left-wingers don't care that Russia enjoys good relations with China or Cuba.

Additionally, since 9/11 American strategic planners have been unwilling to undertake a full alliance with Russia against Islamist fundamentalism because of objections from Arab Gulf states, and European allies in NATO are suspicious of Russian designs in Europe.

Compounding the problem has been the taboo on public discussion of Islamist terrorism in both Europe and the United States (there is no such taboo in Russia). Since discussion of the actual enemy has been repressed, it is my belief that anti-Russian sentiments have actually been symptoms of psychological displacement--unable to criticize the actual enemies of the United States, the public has been licensed to oppose imaginary enemies, such as Russia, "Global Climate Change," Israel, and "White Privilege."

Exacerbating this phenomenon has been a US foreign policy that is totally unsuited to the dangers facing the country since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Instead of crushing Islamic extremism, America has chosen to pursue essentially an updated version of Britain's 19th Century "Great Game" in the Middle East and Central Asia, attempting to reduce Russian influence, including in Afghanistan, once a Soviet satellite, and Iraq, once a Soviet ally. Seen in that context, wars in the former Yugoslavia, Ukraine, Libya, Syria, the 'Stans of Central Asia, have privileged Islam in order to undermine Russian interests.

Unfortunately, America's strategic planners failed to realize that after the end of Communism, Russia's enemies were also America's foes. They wished to "divide and rule" by setting Russia against the United States, in order to establish an Islamic Caliphate in the contested zones.

This remarkably successful policy has led a number of previously pro-American nations to turn back to Russia for protection and support--including a number of former Soviet nations in Europe as well as Egypt, most recently. Turkey may well be joining them, unless American policy shifts dramatically--endangering NATO itself. Ironically, Britain had supported the Ottoman Empire, the "sick man of Europe," as a bulwark against Russian expansion during the 19th Century.

Today it would appear that good relations with Russia could change the dynamic of international relations in our favor, given the manifest failures of America's pro-Islamist foreign policy. With Russia as a full and equal partner in American foreign policy, the West could make short work of Islamic terror. Russia has a proven track record of success, little discussed in the USA--in Chechnya, of all places, where Putin ground Islamists to dust on the orders of Boris Yeltsin. The same sort of Russian tactics are working in Syria...just as they worked against Hitler during World War II.

That is why the Russia Card is the flip side of the Muslim Card. Attacks on Russia are support for ISIS. There is no "Third Way." There are no "Syrian Moderates." Putin is no more of a thug than American allies such as the King of Saudi Arabia, the so-called "Syrian oppostion," or the leaders of Iran who signed a deal with President Obama. Indeed, one could make the case that he is far more civilized.

While General Flynn's resignation is his own fault,  he is also a casualty of the Great Game between Islam and the West, in which Russia has played and will continue play a central historical role. No victory in this struggle is possible without Russian support. Flynn realized this, and so must any successor.

It is clear from the failure of American policies since 9/11 that only a full alliance with Russia can defeat Islamic terrorism. So after Flynn's resignation, it has become crystal clear that America is at a crossroads:

We must accept Russia as an ally in the struggle against Islamic terrorism, or surrender to an Islamic Caliphate.

Bottom line: the Russia Card is in fact America's Trump Card.
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