Speech to Carroll County New Hampshire Republicans Monday, 3-15-21

Only seven at this point

Way back in the 20th century I was born into a family of Boston-Irish-Catholic-Democrats, the fourth of eight children. We were taught that Protestants and Republicans were different from us and not to be trusted. My parents were politically active at the town level and some of my earliest memories are of our mother driving us kids around town to deliver fliers door-to-door encouraging people to vote for either my father running for local office, or a family friend. Politics of all kinds were discussed most nights around our supper table beginning at 5:45 pm. If I showed up late because I was fishing, playing baseball, or finishing my paper route, there would be consequences.

My mother and father

After supper I would sit in front of the television while my father watched the news. John F. Kennedy was our hero and my father proudly displayed a photo of him and Congressman JFK standing next to each other at a meeting to organize a public-employee union called NAGE — the National Association of Government Employees. That union later morphed into today’s SEIU, which functions as an army of Democrat poll workers and thugs. On weekends my father watched 30-minute episodes of “World at War” or “Victory at Sea” When a flotilla was crossing the English Channel on D-Day he would say, “I was there.” When the Battle of Okinawa was depicted with kamikazes crashing in to US ships he would say, “I was there.” 

Okinawa

But then most other fathers on our street were WWII veterans. That’s how it was in suburban Massachusetts in the 1950s and 60s. Every kid was proud of his father and that shaped our world view. In the late sixties and early seventies, however, things changed. Baby boomers grew up, went to college. Many challenged the values of the Greatest Generation. They used drugs. They ignored sexual norms, and opposed the Vietnam War. Heroes like JFK, RFK, Martin Luther King were assassinated. Cities burned in riots. Protests divided the country. President Johnson chose not to run again. Nixon resigned. My older brother started using drugs and left home. Those previously edifying conversations around our supper table became acrimonious.

Similar things were happening up and down my street and across the country. American culture was fraying. Respect for the Greatest Generation was replaced by: “Don’t trust anyone over 30.” 

That unraveling of American pride then paused during eight years of the Reagan Administration, but began anew under the Obama Administration. Last summer cities were again burning in the riots following the George Floyd’s death. America has started shaking again. Today, after only two months of the Biden Administration, political polarization in America is worse than at anytime since the Civil War.

And racism is back in the form of Critical Race Theory. Although banned by President Trump, it has become dominant in public school classrooms just since the November election. If you look at sample curricula virtually anywhere in our country now you’ll see students being taught to categorize themselves by the color of their skin, not the content of their character. White people are born “privileged.” They’re inherently racist against all other people. White people perpetuate “institutional racism” the theory claims, consciously or unconsciously. 

Such BS

Curricula like “The 1619 Project” which purports the United States was built on slavery — and not on notions of liberty and freedom spelled out in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The 1619 Project is being adopted in public schools across several states and a new acronym has emerged: “BIPOC.” If you haven’t seen it yet, you will. It stands for: Black, Indigenous, People of Color. Our country is divided in two now: whites and BIPOCs. This is not good and it’s gaining momentum. Ask your children and grandchildren if they’re hearing it.

And it’s not just in schools. Coca Cola and many other mainstream corporations today train their employees to first acknowledge, then renounce their alleged “White Privilege” and learn to “Be Less White.” The training is mandatory and they must admit being racists.

My teaching career began in the 1970s after I was influenced by the craziness of the 60s and 70s. The first US History textbook I used was one of the most widely-used at the time. Today, however, it would banned. In the chapters leading up the Civil War, it summarized debates between between members of Congress from northern and southern states on slavery. Here’s what it says on page 274 of American History:

Southerners justified slavery as a good thing because:

1. The African slave was an inferior human being. As an inferior, he was suited only to special kinds of work. This work was best done under a system of slavery.

2. Slavery was approved by the Bible. Many southerners pointed out that slavery had existed in Biblical times. The Bible did not condemn slavery. Therefore, they added, it could not be bad or sinful.

3. The slave was treated better than many white factory workers in the north … who worked 12 snd 14 hours a day often in poorly-lighted and unhealthy factories. The slave did most of his work in outdoor in an area that was much warmer and healthier than a northern city.

4. Slavery was important in helping the South develop its leaders… The use of slaves made it possible for southern leaders to devote themselves to law, politics, and government service.

There were commensurate northern arguments against slavery with which you would already be familiar. My students would study, then role-play as ante-bellum northern and southern senators and members of Congress and debate just as Congress did in those years leading up to the Civil War. If a teacher were to try that today he’d be suspended immediately. On end-of-the-year evaluations, though, my students cited that debate as the lesson they learned the most from.

They learned also that slavery was practiced in every other civilization throughout human history — including in black Africa from which American slaves either purchased or captured. Many of our students today, however, believe slavery was unique to America.

The Allegedly Reverend Al Sharpton

Those southern senators and congressmen my students role-played were all Democrats. After WWII they were called Dixiecrats. Today’s Democrats, however, like to put on historical blinders when viewing their party's racist history. They claim that racist southern Democrats all became Republicans when Richard Nixon implemented his “Southern Strategy.” It’s classic projection. Trouble is, there’s little evidence for it.

Nixon said nothing remotely racist over a very long career from 1940s to the 1970s, but Democrats claim he used “racist dog whistles” like “law and order” and “states rights.” Really? Like a secret code? Only one senator — Strom Thurmond — became Republican and only one congressman — Albert Watson of South Carolina. Nearly all Dixiecrats supported Alabama Governor George Wallace, a Democrat, not Nixon. Though John Tower, Jesse Helms and Trent Lott joined the Republicans too, they hadn’t been Dixiecrats. The South became Republican in the 1980s and 90s because of Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America, not because of Nixon.

Few people know that a greater percentage of Republicans voted for the 1964 Civil Rights bill than Democrats and Nixon was one of them. He also supported the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Tom Wicker of the New York Times wrote: “There’s no doubt about it — the Nixon administration accomplished more in 1970 to desegregate Southern school systems than had been done in the 16 previous years or probably since. There’s no doubt either that it was Richard Nixon personally who conceived and led the administration’s desegregation effort.”

Nixon is the president who actually got Affirmative Action going which discriminated against whites in favor of blacks and women. The south became Republican not because of any strategy of Richard Nixon’s. The south became Republican because the south became conservative. It had little to do with racism.

Republicans all

So here we are in 2021. The Democrats run the country again and they just enacted a $1.9 trillion “Covid Relief” bill which has very little to do with COVID. Rather, it has everything to do with Democrat agendas, like $350 billion for bailing out cities like Chicago and Los Angeles and states like Illinois, California, New York and others. Decades of Democrat mayors and governors have brought them to the brink of bankruptcy. They did this by negotiating overly-generous pension and benefit packages they knew they couldn’t afford for public employee unions like the above mentioned SEIU, AFS/CME, and others.

Democrat leaders knew these contracts were unsustainable. They also knew they’d be out of office when the bill came due. The so-called COVID Relief Bill also gives Democrat teachers’ unions tens of billions more to open the schools they’ve kept closed. Money isn’t the problem. They still have billions they haven’t spent from the last relief bill. Maybe some of you are old enough to remember Illinois Republican Senator Everett Dirksen’s remark from earlier times in that state: “A million here, a million there — pretty soon you’re talking real money.” If only it were still a million here and a million there. Now it’s a trillion here and a trillion there — and that’s still not enough for the Democrats!

Next will come still another multi-trillion-dollar piece of legislation — ostensibly for rebuilding infrastructure. Remember President Obama’s $800 billion in “shovel ready projects”? I challenge any of you to point to one of those shovel-ready projects we spent hundreds of billions on. I can’t point to any.

It was different with Republican public works projects over the years. We can point to the Hoover Dam in the twenties. Hoover was a Republican. We can point to Eisenhower’s interstate highways in the fifties. Eisenhower was a Republican. Where are Obama’s shovel ready projects from the 2000s? I give up.

We Republicans have our work cut out for us, don’t we? And so it goes…

BREITBART AND LIMBAUGH

Now that Rush Limbaugh is dead, who might replace him as the popular leader of the conservative movement? I’m not sure anyone could, given Limbaugh’s unique blend of high intelligence, prodigious memory, and analytical skills. It might have been Andrew Breitbart if he hadn’t died of a heart attack nine years ago last week when he was only 42. In his largely autobiographical 2011 book “Righteous Indignation,” Breitbart said Limbaugh shaped his world view.

Raised in Brentwood, California by upper-middle-class Jewish parents who adopted him as an infant, Breitbart had been quite liberal. After he married stage/screen/TV actor Orson Bean’s daughter, he was surprised when seeing a Limbaugh book on Bean’s shelf. He declared that Limbaugh was a fascist and a racist so why the book? Bean asked if Andrew had ever read or listened to Rush and Breitbart admitted he had not, but everyone said so. Bean suggested he give Limbaugh a try. After listening to Rush’s show while driving around LA for a week, Breitbart realized  how wrong he had been. He continued listening and became a conservative for the rest of his life.

Bean and Breitbart

At the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), both Breitbart and Limbaugh were presenters. It was the first year I attended with a press pass that gave me much more access. I could kneel down onstage alongside the main podium and take photos of big-name speakers. I could set up on Bloggers Row with my laptop. Breitbart and others dropped in there several times but we were not introduced at that point.

I had listened to Limbaugh for more than a decade by then. During his, 90-minute talk he said nothing I hadn’t heard before so I wandered through the lobby into other function rooms where other presentations were going on. It was there that I bumped into Breitbart and we chatted a bit. The previous two days I had become intrigued watching his facial expressions while he was seated alongside the main podium listening to Ann Coulter and other big-name speakers. Because whatever he was thinking or feeling was displayed on his face, it was very interesting to watch him through my telephoto lens.

His presentation at the big podium was unpretentious. He spoke extemporaneously as though everyone in the audience were his friend and they seemed to reciprocate. CPAC’s dress code was “business casual,” so I and everyone else wore a jacket and tie throughout the three-day conference but Breitbart would discard his tie and open his shirt collar whenever he could. Like his many friends growing up in the Hollywood entertainment industry growing up, he had been very liberal by default. After becoming a conservative, however, he developed his mantra: “Politics is downstream from culture.”

Breitbart became convinced that conservatism will continue losing ground so long as the left controls Hollywood, academia, and media — especially mainstream media. Three years in a row at CPAC I heard him declare war on mainstream media. I’ve since come to believe firmly that he was right. The left controls what people perceive and Breitbart understood better than most the aphorism, “In Politics, perception is reality.”

Rush Limbaugh became influential because he was on the radio three hours a day for over thirty years. Fifteen million people listened to his analysis whenever anything big happened, cultural or political. Limbaugh had a profound influence on American perception and that’s why the left hated him so much. He peeled off a chunk of their territory and they attacked him desperately trying to retrieve it from him.

Andrew Breitbart’s skill lay in shrewdly forcing mainstream media to cover stories they were studiously ignoring, like the ACORN (Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now) scandal in the fall of 2009. Posing as a pimp, undercover journalist James O’Keefe had collected video from publicly funded ACORN offices in various cities across the country agreeing to help him open whorehouses in which underaged, illegal alien hookers would be hired. O’Keefe offered his videos to mainstream networks but they turned him down. They knew ACORN was a Democrat/Obama-affiliated organization.

James O'Keefe

Through a contact, Breitbart got Fox News to run one video from Baltimore and after a huge outcry mainstream networks were forced to pick up the story. When Democrats then declared it an anomaly in Baltimore, Breitbart then played out more videos once city at a time. Democrats called the second video anomalous too, but then Breitbart continued releasing them from other cities one at a time until it became a huge, very embarrassing story for the new community-organizer-President Obama and the Democrat Party.

In 2011, Breitbart used similar tactics with the unfortunately-named Democrat Congressman Anthony Weiner after learning that Weiner was sending out obscene photos of himself to young women (and later underage girls). Weiner denied everything until Breitbart’s strategy forced him to admit it. He resigned in disgrace soon after.

Matt Drudge

Among many other things, Breitbart helped both Arianna Huffington and Matt Drudge set up their highly-successful web sites — before each turned liberal.

THE WEIRD WORLD OF WOKE

When teaching 20th century US History, I loved the subject, and I was given autonomy regarding how I taught it. One year, however, there was a bulge in students, and being a columnist, I was asked to pick up two writing classes in place of two US History classes, which went to another teacher. I supplied that teacher with materials and a syllabus, but she ignored them. Instead, she taught slavery based on the movie “Roots.” When I alerted the administration, nothing was done. She did what she wanted for the entire school year and fifty students didn’t learn 20th Century US History.

That experience made me wonder if anyone is really in charge of what gets taught in our schools. Then two weeks ago I read about David Flynn, who was the football coach at Dedham High School in Massachusetts until he was fired, but his firing had nothing to do with his coaching. He was let go because he complained about what his daughter was being taught in her World Geography and Ancient History class at Dedham Middle School. Flynn objected because what she was learning had nothing to do with World Geography or Ancient History.

“Instead,” according to the lawsuit Flynn filed against the school district, “the instruction concerned issues of race, gender, stereotypes, prejudices, discrimination, and politics, among others. In one assignment, Plaintiff’s daughter was asked to consider various ‘risk factors’ and ‘mitigating factors’ that two people identified as ‘white’ and the other identified as ‘black’ – purportedly might use to assess each other on a city street. Included among the various factors were skin color, gender, age, physical appearance, and attire. ‘Black,’ ‘aggressive body language’ and ‘wrong neighborhood were among the ‘risk factors’ purportedly assessed by the person identified as ‘white.’ ‘White’ and ‘Police officer’ were among the ‘risk factors’ purportedly assessed by the person identified as ‘black.’”

Other parents whose children attended Dedham Middle School agreed with Flynn’s objections, but Flynn was summoned to meet with the district superintendent, middle school principal, and the athletic director to discuss his disapproval. They produced his letter to them, asked if he’d emailed it to other parents, then told him they would be taking the football program “in a different direction.” He only learned he was fired when the three officials released a letter to football players and parents stating:

Dave Flynn

”We are writing today and are sorry to inform you that Dave Flynn will not be reappointed as the Head Coach of Dedham High School football. We met with Mr. Flynn today because he has expressed significant philosophical differences with the direction, goals, and values of the school district. Due to these differences, we felt it best to seek different leadership for the program at this time.”

Gregory Manco

Lest you think Dedham High School anomalous, last week I read about Professor Gregory Manco’s experience at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. On his private Twitter account on which he wrote: “Suppose your great-great-grandfather murdered someone. The victim’s great-great-grandson knocks on your door, shows you a newspaper clipping from 1905, and demands compensation from you. Your response? Now get this racist reparation bull**** out of your head for good.” Then he said racial bias training, now ubiquitous in education everywhere, “divides us and *worsens* race relations.”

When some students found his tweets and reported him, the university responded saying: “We thank our students for bringing to our attention a possible violation of our values. The University launched an investigation into a report of bias. The faculty member will not be in the classroom or in a coaching role while the investigation is conducted.”

The university’s faculty handbook says extramural comments by professors should be “free from institutional censorship.” Not anymore I guess. I hope Manco sues.

Charles Negy

Then there is the unfortunate former Professor Charles Negy who was fired by the University of Central Florida in January for daring to tweet: “Black privilege is real: Besides affirm[ative] action, special scholarships and other set asides, being shielded from legitimate criticism is a privilege. But as a group, they’re missing out on much needed feedback.”

These three men are but a few of many around the country who are being fired, suspended, disciplined, and sentenced to months of “diversity training” for articulating what millions of Americans think, but are afraid to speak about openly. No wonder. Is the United States emulating China with its “social credit system,” which which uses Big Tech to monitor citizens the way Big Brother monitored Winston Smith through a telescreen in George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984.”

This is the world of woke. If I were to teach US History today the way I did for the twenty years of my career up to 2011, I’d be facing the same discipline as the men cited above. The handwriting was on the wall for me, but that’s a subject for another column.

GOVERNMENT DRIVES UP COST OF COLLEGE

Having worked very hard to put myself through college and then taking out loans to help my wife and children do the same, and then working many years to pay them off, I surely do not want to pay on other people’s loans as well. If Democrats follow through with their promises to “forgive” $1.5 trillion in student debt, I’ll be very pissed — and I won’t be alone.

A WWII vet I knew told me he could work his way through the University of Iowa just by working summers. His summer jobs paid all his tuition, books, and fees just prior to Pearl Harbor — and then he joined the Army Air Corps as an officer. Then he finished graduate school on the GI Bill and finally retired as a Professor of English at Boston University.

I too was able to pay my own way through college by working. My parents couldn’t afford to help me other than letting me live with them through my first year. After that I was on my own. I worked summers and also after school during the year, so it was harder for me than for my WWII friend. While my fellow students lived in frat houses and dorms, did sports and partied, I paid rent for a tenement apartment and worked full-time. Thus I finished undergraduate and graduate school with no debt.

By the time my own children were going to college, it had gotten more expensive. For many years I was writing checks for two daughters and my wife to earn degrees. I told the kids I could pay them what it cost for tuition, books, and fees at a state university in Maine but if they wanted to go somewhere else, they had to make up the difference. I worked three jobs; they all worked too, but it still wasn’t enough. I had to take out loans and so did they. 

For years after they had all finished I was still making payments — my last one about fifteen years ago I think. One daughter still has payments but then she chose to attend college out west. So, why have college costs gone up so much since my WWII friend and I went? Because they could. And why could they? Because government started “helping.” That began with Sputnik in 1957 when our federal government panicked and started lending money to promising STEM students to help Americans catch up to Soviet scientists. That program paid off all around, but subsequent student aid programs are what really drove up costs.

Those programs started in 1965 with the Higher Education Act. Other subsidies too numerous to mention piled on from there. Before government got involved, college tuition had remained fairly stable for decades. Ordinary people could work their way through as I did, but when virtually every student could get federally subsidized loans, colleges could get away with jacking up tuition and fees. In competition with each other to attract students, they added expensive frills unrelated to learning. In the fifty years between 1969 to 2019, the price of a college education in America went up over 3000%! Why? Because it could.

Maine is among the poorest states, usually competing with Alabama or Mississippi for the lowest per capita income in the country, yet the median salary for college president in Maine is almost $300,000 a year. When Senator Elizabeth Warren of neighboring Massachusetts ran for president, she complained about college costs, yet she made over $400,000 for teaching part-time at Harvard. Some claim she taught only one class, but her apologists like those at Politifact say: “[University] salaries are determined principally by research output and associated reputation, rather than the number of students the professor teaches,” and “she taught two classes, not one.”

While numbers for teaching staff have remained fairly stable over the past forty years, the number of university administrators has skyrocketed. So have their salaries — especially “diversity coordinators” who average over $103,000. There were no “diversity coordinators” when I went to college, but they’re everywhere now. The University of Michigan alone has nearly 100 working full time and one has a salary higher than President Biden’s.

With Covid 19 restrictions over the past year, few students actually attend classes, yet tuition charges have not gone down. I suspect salaries haven’t either. Academic rigor, however, has certainly been reduced from its already declining pre-Covid levels. As college costs have increased astronomically during my lifetime, academic standards has declined precipitously. As we pay more and get less, students, their parents, and taxpayers are suspecting college isn’t worth the cost anymore.

With the exception of STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering & Math] programs, and perhaps law school, many conclude that it isn’t. Government should consider eliminating grants and loans to students who want to study anything else — and never even think about forgiving loans already made.

Left & Right February 17, 2021

 New guest Jonna Carter of South Conway, NH sits in the left chair for this show. She describes herself a "left of liberal" but not a "leftist" which she considers radical. She's a writer and the owner of five rescue dogs. Her column appears in the The Conway Daily Sun on Wednesdays.

We discuss many things including division within the Republican Party, what a Trumpist (her word) is, preservation of historical buildings, my use of "pro-abortion" vs her recommendation of "pro-choice" instead.

EVOLUTION OF LEFT & RIGHT

For several years now I’ve been doing a small, local TV show called “Left & Right” on Conway, New Hampshire’s “Valley Vision.” It evolved from of a previous show called “Taking Sides,” hosted by New Hampshire investment counselor Anthony Cloutier. I was a frequent guest there beginning about eleven years ago and was expected to argue for the conservative side because of views expressed in my newspaper column. Cloutier eventually lost interest however, and I sort of took over, inviting people to argue opposing viewpoints on issues of the day — and the show was renamed.

Sometimes, however, my invited guests are not completely comfortable being called leftists. While a few were, others consider themselves moderate, center-left, or libertarian even though I considered them liberal or leftist based on their writings. Consider also that President Joe Biden emerged from a large pool of leftist Democrat candidates as a moderate, although many pundits are questioning that characterization based on his recent executive orders. So, what exactly does it mean to be on the left in today’s parlance? And what characterizes someone on the right?

One’s position on abortion is probably the over-arching criterion. Leftists today are overwhelmingly pro-abortion while those on the right are usually against it. All the Democrats who ran for president in the past several election cycles were pro-abortion while only a few Republicans were. The second-biggest issue would have to be the role of government. Right-wing conservatives consider government a necessary evil and would agree with a statement by  Henry David Thoreau and John O’Sullivan: “That government is best which governs least.”

The left attempts to solve problems by instituting government programs. The right leaves it to private individuals acting alone or in concert. The left would see more power exercised by the central government in Washington, DC. The right would uphold Constitutional limits on federal government power and, when possible, devolve to states or to the people as the 10th Amendment states. The left believes in universal healthcare funded by the federal government. The right opposes that and believes competition between private health insurance companies would lower costs.

The left pushes income equality. It would raise taxes on the rich and spend on social programs. However, despite trillions spent on social programs beginning with President Johnson’s “War on Poverty” over more than half a century, poverty seems to be winning. The right would reduce taxes, reduce government regulation of business, and balance the federal budget. However, Republican Presidents Reagan, the two Bushes, and Trump preached such principles and were considered “right,” but the size of government and the federal debt both expanded under their administrations.

Regarding education, the left would make public colleges and universities free and abolish existing student loan debt. It’s already changing K-12 public school curricula in Illinois, Minnesota, Massachusetts, and other states to accentuate “social justice” even in English, math and science. Literature by white men is being abolished. LGBT issues are broadly emphasized as well as a “non-binary gender spectrum” with more than two sexes. This week, Illinois is expected to rule outright that teachers must: “embrace and encourage progressive viewpoints and perspectives.” 

In history curricula, white men like Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, and others are de-emphasized or ignored altogether and replaced by “people of color.” The right champions achievements of western civilization in science, math, and literature. It would teach those along with governing principles based on individual liberty and proposed by Founding Fathers like Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Hamilton. It stresses civics lessons portraying the US Constitution as the best plan for government ever designed in human history.

Although I saw some of this coming when I was still teaching US History ten years ago, I never would have believed how far and how fast the left has been able to push its agenda in our schools.

Regarding immigration, the left would virtually ignore illegal immigration, end deportations, and stop building a border wall. The right generally opposes illegal immigration and especially welfare for illegal immigrants, although some factions of the Republican Party do not. Aside from them, the right supports a border wall, deportations of illegals, and strictly limiting immigrants from terror-supporting countries like Iran and Syria.

The left favors strict gun control. It would confiscate “assault rifles” without defining exactly what those are. It would limit ammunition sales, the size of gun clips, it would more strictly control concealed carry permits, and institute stringent background checks. The right stresses a literal interpretation of the second clause of the Second Amendment: “…the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

On future shows, I’ll ask my guests if they agree with the above outline of what comprises the left and the right in 2021 America.