{"id":94,"date":"2015-05-19T10:14:05","date_gmt":"2015-05-19T10:14:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/conservativehistorian.com\/?page_id=94"},"modified":"2020-11-11T19:58:05","modified_gmt":"2020-11-11T19:58:05","slug":"current-columns","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativehistorian.com\/columns\/current-columns\/","title":{"rendered":"Current Columns"},"content":{"rendered":"
Selected History of Presidential Election Defeats<\/strong><\/p>\n November 2020\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n In an essay for the History News Network entitled, \u201cJohn Adams Knew When to Go Home,\u201d political science professor R.B. Bernstein writes, \u201cn 1801, John Adams did something just as momentous, just as reaffirming of democratic constitutional principle. After losing the presidential election of 1800 to his former friend and political rival Thomas Jefferson, Adams decided that losing an election, even one for the presidency means what it says. Adams went home.\u201d And though the election of 1800 was just the fourth time the American people went to the polls to elect the president, this one was different. The two leading candidates, Aaron Burr and Thomas Jefferson had the same number of electoral votes meaning that the House of Representatives would decide the election.<\/p>\n Adams, after a bitterly fought campaign, came in third. \u201cNor did he listen to hints by fellow members of his Federalist party that he let them keep him in office as a caretaker president while the House of Representatives wrestled with resolving the electoral deadlock between Jefferson and Aaron Burr.\u201d Adds Bernstein. So what happened to Adams after his time in the White House (in fact, the first to occupy that structure because Washington held his presidency in New York)? Bernstein writes, \u201cHe never left Quincy again. For twenty-five years, he read, wrote, argued, reflected, and philosophized about politics, government, history, religion, and his life and career. He carried on a bitter quarrel in print with a foe long dead, Alexander Hamilton. He entertained himself by exchanging dozens of letters with such old friends as Benjamin Rush and Benjamin Waterhouse, and revived an old friendship by exchanging more letters with Thomas Jefferson.\u201d<\/p>\n In some regards, Adams\u2019s best presidential decision was the one at the end of his presidency. If Washington set the standard for the peaceful transition of power and established the precedent for a limited presidency, Adams ceding of power in 1800 was equally important. Washington chose not to run again, but even in that choice, did so with the knowledge that had he run for a third term, he would have won. John Adams was not just the second president of the United States; he was the first one defeated in reelection. How Adams managed the transition of power provided an essential precedent for future presidents. It is one thing to cede power after two terms: Jefferson, Jackson, and Barack Obama. It is quite another to cede control after a single term after a stinging defeat.<\/p>\n Contrast Adam\u2019s behavior with that with his contemporary, and due to a certain musical from Lin-Manual Miranda, the now-famous Aaron Burr. After serving as Jefferson\u2019s vice-president, Burr realized that Jefferson would run again in 1804 but would not feature Burr as a running mate. Burr then conducted an unsuccessful run for New York Governor. Whatever his plans after this loss, he died along with Alexander Hamilton on the plain of Weehawken, New Jersey.\u00a0In 2020 politics can seem vitriolic, but this would be the equivalent of Mike Pence gunning down Obama era Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew. After killing Hamilton, Burr engaged in a series of misadventures, resulting in a treason trial. He fled the United States, got married at 77, and died in relative peace in New York.\u00a0Burr is one of the few individuals on this list whose post-presidential run life was more exciting than the preceding years.<\/p>\n Some Presidents choose not to run because they were not interested in a second term, as was the case with Chester A. Arthur and James K. Polk. Others know the outcome, so do not even try as was the situation with John Tyler, James Buchanan, and Andrew Johnson. But most of those who serve one term usually run again, and in the history of the presidency, nine of them, including Adams, ended on the losing side.<\/p>\n Because of the power of the \u201cVirginia Dynasty,\u201d elections after 1800 consisted of names that only a real history geek would love. This list includes Charles Pinkney and Rufus King. It is doubtful that the talented Manual Miranda will be featuring a lavish Broadway musical called \u201cPinkney!\u201d any time soon.<\/p>\n DeWitt Clinton was the loser in 1812 to James Madison. Yet his fame is ensured through his efforts as Governor of New York to drive the Erie Canal construction. This accomplishment greatly impacted the region\u2019s entire economy and helped New York cement its status as the Union\u2019s 1st city. Clinton\u2019s historical impact is far more relevant for this than as a name in Madison\u2019s biography. In 1820, the Dynasty, and its standard-bearer of that year, James Monroe, ran unopposed and received 76% of the popular vote. This election was the first time and the last time this has happened in 58 presidential elections, and 200 years after Monroe and his \u201cEra of Good Feelings\u201d that situation seems increasingly anachronistic.<\/p>\n During his years in the early Republic, Andrew Jackson made so much history, good, bad, and heinous, that it is challenging to pick which issue to focus on. But fortunately, this piece guides us to the elections of 1824, the first time that a loser in a presidential election would run again and win the White House. John Quincy Adams, like his father, only served a single term. But unlike his father, Quincy Adams went on to a prominent career in the House of Representatives. As Margaret Hogan writing for the Miller Center notes, \u201cAdams served nine post-presidential terms in Congress from 1830 until he died in 1848, usually voting in the minority. He supported the Bank of the United States\u2019 rechartering, opposed the annexation of Texas and the war with Mexico, and struggled for eight years to end the House\u2019s notorious \u201cgag rule,\u201d which tabled without debate any petition critical of slavery. Adams attempted to read into the record at every opportunity the hundreds of anti-slavery petitions that abolitionists around the country sent him regularly. The House finally relented and repealed the rule in 1844.\u201d Adams\u2019s career is one of the many examples that puts paid to the conjecture of individual progressive writers of this day that whites were somehow tolerant of slavery. It also should be noted that neither Adams nor his father attended their successor\u2019s inaugurations.<\/p>\n Martin Van Buren became president in 1836 upon the success of the Democratic machine he had built and the popularity of his predecessor and patron, Andrew Jackson. But like many one-term presidents, he also inherited an economic debacle. In 1992 political operative James Carville famously intoned that \u201cIt\u2019s the economy stupid.\u201d In this pithy phrase lies the kernel of wisdom and presidential success. It is not a coincidence that Van Buren, Hoover, and H.W. Bush all had either a recession or depression occurring that affected their electoral chances and made them one-term presidents.<\/p>\n After his defeat in the 1940 election, Van Buren remained active in politics but took on an increasingly anti-slavery position, an exciting policy given his patron was a slaveholder. In 1848 Van Buren became the rare presidential loser who tried to run again but in this case, not the Democratic Party he had built, but running for the Free Soil party whose central plank was abolition. A canny veteran of politics, Van Buren probably knew he had no chance but was instead making a political statement. As it happened, the Free Soil Party garnered 10% of the popular vote but lost to Whig Zachery Taylor, as did Lewis Cass, the Democratic candidate. Cass was the first harbinger of the decline of the dominance of the Democratic Party. He was the first non-incumbent Democrat to lose and the first who did not succeed another Democrat. Cass later went on to a Senate seat and in 1857 at 75, Secretary of State.<\/p>\n Between Jackson, who won a second term in 1832, and Abraham Lincoln, who won his 2nd term in 1864, no president could win a second term. Some of them had the misfortune to die in office, such as William Henry Harrison and Zachery Taylor.\u00a0Others, such as James Polk, who might have won a second term, chose not to run again. Since he passed away shortly after leaving office, it was probably best that he did. That leaves a who\u2019s who of one-termer, including Martin Van Buren, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan. In the latter case, his popularity was at such low ebb that he declined to even try for the second term. John Tyler was one of those presidents whose popularity was such that a run was out of the question for a term in his own right.<\/p>\n Because William Henry Harrison died so early in his presidency (the first such succession in American history), Tyler served a nearly full term. His post-presidency did not cover him in glory as he later became a Congressman in the Confederate Legislature during the Civil War.<\/p>\n Andrew Johnson experienced one of the most tumultuous presidencies in the Republic\u2019s history, overseeing a pro south version of Reconstruction, getting impeached and nearly convicted, and failing to secure his party\u2019s nomination 1868. After his presidency, he returned to his native Tennessee. Once a pariah in that state due to his pro-union stance, his position on Reconstruction was such that white Tennesseans saw him as a hero, and in 1875, he became the only former president elected to the Senate.<\/p>\n U.S. Grant was unique as one of the few presidents never to have served in an elected office before his election. Other members of that group include William Taft, Herbert Hoover, Dwight Eisenhower, and Donald Trump. In an era where close elections would become the norm, Grant won both his elections easily besting Horatio Seymour and Horace Greeley. Seymour never ran for office after his loss.<\/p>\n Grover Cleveland was a great president. He reversed many of the destructive policies of the Harrison Administration. He was pro-business, pro-gold standard, anti-tariff, and anti-trust busting. One of my favorite political sayings of all the presidents comes from him, \u201c\u201cThough the people support the government, the government should not support the people,\u201d in response to the Panic of 1893.\u00a0His hands-off attitude meant that the subsequent depression was over in about three years. FDR\u2019s differentiated response, massive government intervention meant the Great Depression was not over after eight years of the New Deal, and even then, World War II had to bail out the nation. Unfortunately, Cleveland is not remembered for any of this.\u00a0Instead, he is remembered, if at all, as the only presidential loser to run again and win and a second term.<\/p>\n There have been many economic recessions and even depressions in our history. It was one such calamity that did in Martin Van Buren\u2019s reelection.\u00a0Had Cleveland not already served the first term, it would have been difficult to see him winning an election after the panic of 1893. George H.W. Bush had a presidential approval rating of nearly 90%. This was so high, prominent democrats of the era looked to 1996 for their chances. Little did they know that a brief economic recession would so impact the election of 1992 that H.W. Bush would become a one-term president and that a little known Governor of Arkansas would take the oval office.<\/p>\n Of all the presidential losers, arguably, none had a greater post-presidency than William Taft. The salient personality of Taft\u2019s presidential elections was the borderline narcissist Theodore Roosevelt. TR was one of the presidents, such as Washington, Jackson, and Reagan, who were so popular that they could nearly designate their successor. The problem is that all of these successors ended as one-term presidents. Indeed there were circumstances around these defeats. Van Buren had the Panic of 1837 on his watch, and Taft faced a split party.\u00a0 But part of the problem with these presidents is that they were not their predecessors. In 1988 Republicans elected a third Reagan term, but the president was H.W. Bush.<\/p>\n TR\u2019s backing was instrumental in Taft\u2019s 1908 win. Unfortunately, Roosevelt was also the architect for his loss.\u00a0Such was the power of the Republican coalition after the elections of 1894 and 1896 that they could win any election (until the Great Depression and 1932). The exception was 1912, when the egomaniacal Roosevelt broke the Washingtonian precedent and ran for a third term. This entry split the Republican vote and ushered Woodrow Wilson into office as one of the worst presidents. Though embittered by the loss, Taft did not run for office again, instead accepting a teaching post at Yale and giving paid speeches. In 1921 President Warren G Harding nominated Taft to the Supreme Court for the role of Chief Justice. The Senate confirmed Taft by a vote of 61-4.<\/p>\n United States Supreme Court Chief Justice was the role that Taft coveted even more than the presidency.\u00a0In an article entitled \u201cChief Justice, Not President, Was William Howard Taft\u2019s Dream Job\u201d writer Erick Trickey notes, \u201cWilliam Howard Taft never really wanted to be president. Politics was his wife\u2019s ambition for him, not his own. Before he was Secretary of War or governor of the Philippines, Taft, an intellectual son and grandson of judges, spent eight blissful years as a federal appeals court judge. \u201cI love judges, and I love courts,\u201d President Taft said in a speech in 1911. \u201cThey are my ideals that typify on earth what we shall meet hereafter in heaven under a just God.\u201d Trickey adds, \u201cs chief justice, Taft rejoiced in his reversal of fortune. On the bench, wrote journalist William Allen White, he resembled \u201cone of the high gods of the world, a smiling Buddha, placid, wise, gentle, sweet.\u201d To manage his declining health and reduce his famous girth, Taft walked three miles to work at the Supreme Court\u2019s chamber in the U.S. Capitol building. Soon he was down to 260 pounds, a near-low for him. He rarely looked back at his years as a politician, except to bid them good riddance.\u201d<\/p>\n Because many presidents, and party nominees, have received their opportunities into their middle years, post-presidential life is often measured in years but not decades. There are two 20th century exceptions to this \u2013 Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter.\u00a0Of Hoover, historian Daniel Hamilton writes, \u201ctill a relatively youthful man upon his defeat in 1932, the fifty-eight-year-old former President lived another thirty-two years before his death on October 20, 1964. Immediately after the inauguration of Franklin Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover retreated to his home in Palo Alto, California. For much of the 1930s\u2014and, indeed, for decades to come\u2014the public, and especially the Democratic Party, blamed Hoover for the Great Depression. Likewise, few Republicans in the 1930s wanted Hoover involved in party politics because of his negative standing in the popular mind. Wealthy and generous, Hoover did not need to work, but even the fishing that he loved could consume only so many hours of the week. From his home in Palo Alto, Hoover launched a series of bitter attacks on the New Deal in letters and essays.\u201d Hoover spent much of these years getting foreign policy wrong.\u00a0 Though no fan of Hitler he opposed American entry into World War II, using the Atom Bomb, and the Cold War.<\/p>\n It has now been 40 years since James E. Carter lost his reelection bid in 1980.\u00a0 His opponent in that race and both Vice Presidential nominees have all passed. Unlike many presidents, after their term officially ended, Carter has kept his profile relatively high working through his<\/p>\n As Carl Cannon has noted, writing for RealClearPolitics, \u201cOstensibly, Carter\u2019s 2002 award was given for \u201chis decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.\u201d Few would quarrel with that description; and if one were to consider only the Carter Center\u2019s work to eradicate a disease known as river blindness, Jimmy Carter would have been a deserving recipient.\u201d Of course, the Nobel Committee being what it is, \u201cpolitics is never far from the surface of human affairs, and in 2002 Norwegian Nobel Committee Chairman Gunnar Berge sullied Carter\u2019s award by blurting out in an interview that it \u201cshould be interpreted\u201d as a \u201ckick in the leg\u201d to George W. Bush.\u201d Many thought Carter should have been awarded much earlier for his work on the 1978 Camp David Accords.<\/p>\n Not as worthy has been Carter\u2019s virulence on the Palestinian Israeli conflict.\u00a0\u201cThe bottom line is this: Peace will come to Israel and the Middle East only when the Israeli government is willing to comply with international law, with the Roadmap for Peace, with official American policy, with the wishes of a majority of its citizens \u2014 and honor its previous commitments \u2014 by accepting its legal borders. All Arab neighbors must pledge to honor Israel\u2019s right to live in peace under these conditions.\u201d \u2013 An excerpt from Carter\u2019s book, \u201cPalestine: Peace Not Apartheid.\u201d The title, provocative in itself, tells all one needs to know on Carter\u2019s stance. The Palestinian leadership does not want peace, for their legitimacy rests not on their ability to lead, but instead, the power to fight Israel is lost on Carter.\u00a0Carter lost the presidency for several reasons, not the least because the job was too big for him.\u00a0His post-presidency often shows the same lack of judgment and awareness.<\/p>\n If Carter\u2019s post-presidency was somewhat controversial, George H.W. Bush was a model of what a post president can accomplish. In addition to focusing on his library, the Miller Center states, \u201cBush also joined with former President Bill Clinton after a tsunami from the Indian Ocean struck Southeast Asia in December 2004. The two former Presidents created the Bush-Clinton Houston Tsunami Fund, a national fundraising campaign to assist damaged communities throughout the region.\u201d This was to become one of four projects that the two joined in for assistance to other nations. George W. Bush noted of his father, \u201cHe has two favorite 62-year-olds, myself and Bill Clinton.\u201d<\/p>\n As of this writing, Joe Biden has won the presidential election of 2020. I supported Trump in 2016 and again in 2020 but not based on his personality but rather his policies. Knowing the limitations of his character, it is not easy to believe he will go gently.\u00a0 As noted above, neither Adams attended their successor\u2019s inaugurations. John Quincy did not see the advent of a Jackson presidency in the most favorable light, \u201cHe wrote in his diary that \u201cThe sun of my political life set in the deepest gloom.\u201d Filled with sadness for the nation, Adams stayed in Washington for a few months before returning to his hometown of Quincy, Massachusetts.\u201d<\/p>\n Hard to predict but to think about speeches, a radio show, and a possible TV program. But the looming question for Republican presidential hopefuls running against President Harris in 2024 (you read that right) will be twofold: who will Trump support, and maybe, just maybe, will he do what only one other of the 46 presidents has done. Run again and win.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Lamentations of Our Times\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n October 2020<\/strong><\/p>\n Lamentation: the passionate expression of grief or sorrow; weeping.<\/p>\n \u201cIf it were possible to cure evils by lamentation and to raise the dead with tears, then gold would be a less valuable thing than weeping.\u201d Sophocles, Greek Playwright<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no harm in patience, and no profit in lamentation.\u201d Abu Bakr, Arab Caliph<\/p>\n In a recent TikTok video, a young woman can be seen screaming that she wished she had never been born because of her whiteness. The daughter of a close friend of mine stated on Facebook that what happened to Jacob Blake made her \u201csick, absolutely sick to my stomach.\u201d I should note this friend is a multi-millionaire, the daughter has a well-paying role in a giant insurance company, and has never wanted for anything in terms of physical sustenance in her life.<\/p>\n Upon hearing the death of Ahmad Aubrey at the hands of white racists, one of 223 (2015 stats) murders of blacks by whites, or about .00001% of the population of 43 million, Los Angeles Laker basketball player Lebron James, an African American, stated that it is not even safe for him to go outside. Notwithstanding, the hundreds of millions of dollars do not seem sufficient for Mr. James to afford the necessary security to avoid the 1 in 187,000 odds. Lebron should immediately fill in his Olympic sized, lushly decorated, swimming pool, which he photographed himself in for his Instagram account, because the odds of him drowning are about 1 in 1,190. He is more likely to die of a dog attack than to die at the hands of a white human being.<\/p>\n Breonna Taylor and Jacob Blake lawyer, Benjamin Crump, says about America in 2020. \u201cThe unjust verdict in Breonna Taylor\u2019s case affects the mental health of Black people in Louisville and nationwide. 1\/3 of new mental health clients said Bre, not getting justice, was their reason for needing treatment.\u201d The evidence for this? A TMZ article using a sample of 30, of which 10 of them said that the Breonna Taylor judgment was the reason for their mental illness the day after the decision. How Mr. Crump extrapolates that to \u201cand nationwide\u201d which would comprise about 100 million people, is a little opaque. Still, like the Taylor family lawyer, who presumably lost his lawsuit, it sounds like good copy for Twitter.<\/p>\n The lamentation of being African American in the United States in 2020 is just one of many laments extolled in America. Another is around the COVID-19 virus that emanated from China.<\/p>\n What is not said is this simple fact of COVID-19, and this is the one fact that was known in March, and it is known as of this writing in October 2020. According to the Centers for Disease Control, of a sample of 194,000 deaths, 58% of those were above the age of 75. And when the period is lowered to 65, it comprises over 80% of all fatalities. COVID is not a plague in a traditional sense but one that preys on the old and infirm. Given that the average life span is 79 were these deaths COVID or \u201ccomplications related to COVID.\u201d In one case, Annie Glenn, widow of astronaut John Glenn, was a COVID victim at 100 years of age? That is a COVID death, or was COVID the determinant of death by old age? Nevertheless, upon this data and worldwide CASE COUNT of 40 million, one half of one percent of the total world population, governments decided to put the entire planet into economic recession.<\/p>\n The subject of hunger is also a lament of our time. According to the non-profit Ample Harvest, \u201calthough approximately\u00a0one out of six Americans\u00a0experiences food insecurity today, there is a more than adequate amount of food available. Hunger in America can be solved.\u201d\u00a0 Just to be clear, even a non-profit seeking donations and political relevance is not saying we are starving, just this food insecurity thing. We are not starving, not famine\u2014food insecurity.<\/p>\n Here is another article on food hunger, \u201cThese facts do not end the debate.\u00a0Food insecurity\u00a0is defined as the disruption of\u00a0food\u00a0intake or eating patterns because of a lack of money and other resources. In 2014, 17.4 million U.S. households were\u00a0food insecure\u00a0at some time during the year.\u201d This according to the Department of Health and Human Services. And this from a different U.S. Executive department, \u201cThe Agriculture Department announced this morning that\u00a048 million Americans\u00a0live in \u201cfood insecure\u201d households.\u201d And, as Senator Bernie Sanders noted in 2012, in his usual measured style, \u201cNationwide, hunger is at an all-time high.\u201d<\/p>\n Given that the United States is a substantial net exporter of food, this is all pretty alarming. Only it is not valid. James Bovard, writing for the Foundation of Economic Education, notes, \u201cFood insecurity\u201d is a statistic designed to mislead. USDA defines food insecurity as being \u201cuncertain of having, or unable to acquire, enough food to meet the needs of all their members because they had insufficient money or other resources for food.\u201d But as Bovard goes onto to note, it is not entirely what the government is implying, \u201cUSDA noted: \u201cFor most food-insecure households, the inadequacies were in the form of reduced quality and variety rather than insufficient quantity.\u201d The definition of \u201cfood insecure\u201d includes anyone who frets about\u00a0not being able to purchase food\u00a0at any point. If someone states that they feared running out of food for a single day (but didn\u2019t run out), that is an indicator of being \u201cfood insecure\u201d for the entire year \u2014 regardless of whether they ever missed a single meal. If someone wants organic kale but can afford only conventional kale, that is another \u201cfood insecure\u201d indicator.\u201d<\/p>\n A Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics study concluded that \u201cfood insecure\u201d adults are far more likely to be obese than \u201cfood secure\u201d adults \u2014 indicating that a shortage of food is not the real health problem. According to\u00a0the American Medical Association<\/em>\u00a0Journal, \u201cseven times as many\u00a0(low-income) children are obese as are underweight.\u201d<\/p>\n Politicians, including the aforementioned Sanders, like to say that this or that is unique in American history, the this or that always aligning to their political narratives. But in the case of obesity in America, that is historically unique. According to the Centers for Disease Control, \u201cFrom 1999\u20132000 through 2017\u20132018, the prevalence of obesity increased from 30.5% to 42.4%, and the prevalence of severe obesity increased from 4.7% to 9.2%. Essentially nearly one half of Americans are overweight. Given the million-year history of humanity, that in and of itself is unique. It is also odd that both young and middle-age is comparable to older populations in obesity. Given the greater activity of the young, and a more active metabolisms, this is odd. Yet this is where unique gets piled onto exceptional in human history. As stated by the American Diabetes Association, \u201cIn contrast to international trends, people in America who live in the most poverty-dense counties are those most prone to obesity. Counties with poverty rates of >35% have obesity rates 145% greater than wealthy counties.\u201d In all other countries before the 19th century, lack of food would always hit the poorest people, usually a high percentage of the population, much harder than the rich. This is the first time, in about 14,000 years, that poor people have higher rates of obesity than rich ones.<\/p>\n The other troubling aspect is that the governmental entities providing the data are also the same to most benefit from hunger issues. The agricultural department mainly exists to support food producers.\u00a0Here is the boilerplate from the website, \u201cWe have the vision to provide economic opportunity through innovation, helping rural America to thrive; to promote agriculture production.\u201d The dots self-connect. Hunger in America means we need more food. Since food insecurity by nature affects more impoverished Americans, it is better to distribute through governmental entities in vouchers such as food stamps. The best, most consistent customer for farmers is the U.S. government.\u00a0If the food insecurity issue was as severe as noted, who benefits the most: farmers and those government departments managing the system.<\/p>\n So now that we have learned how awful and terrible it is to live in the United States of today, a nation rife with racial animosity, continuous hunger, and pestilence.\u00a0 It is time to compare the hellhole of American today with historical examples of these lamentations.<\/p>\n Racism<\/p>\n The primary note of \u201csystematic racism\u201d is a clarion call to roll over any barriers to political power acquisition.\u00a0Yet our racism has not prevented African Americans from becoming millionaires, mayors, governors, CEOs, Senators, cabinet officials, and even president. Barack Obama\u2019s post-presidency saw him and his wife follow up his two terms in office by earning nearly 100 million dollars. Contrast this with the fate of groups within the medieval period provided by this author.\u00a0Geraldine Heng, writing for History Magazine stated, \u201cSlavery in the medieval period was also configured by race: Caucasian slave women in Islamic Spain birthed sons and heirs for Arab Muslim rulers, including the famed Caliphs of Cordoba; the ranks of the slave dynasties of Turkic and Caucasian sultans and military elites in Mamluk Egypt were regularly resupplied by European, especially Italian slavers; and the Romani (\u201cGypsies\u201d) in southeastern Europe became enslaved by religious houses and landowning elites who used Romani slaves as labor well into the modern era, making \u201cGypsy\u201d the name of a slave race.\u201d<\/p>\n The point is that racism has always been with humankind, and in a nation of 330 million if one 10th of one10th of one 10th of one 10th Americans are racist, that is 33,000 people. That is not a tiny number, but for those who are yelling racist, it is enough to say there is racism. But that is simply not nearly enough to establish the charge of systematic racism.\u00a0 The type of systematic racism that was the official policy of Caliphates in Spain or Sultans in Egypt.<\/p>\n Disease<\/p>\n The Bubonic Plague, or Black Death, which occurred in the 14th century, is relatively well known to Western minds. Less known is the \u201cThird Plague\u201d that happened in the last 19th century and emanated from China. \u201cculminating in 1907, where the death toll reached more than one million. Altogether, the third plague pandemic claimed around 12 million lives in India.\u201d It also caused another 3 million deaths worldwide. That 12 million was when India\u2019s population was around 238 million, meaning that 5% of the population perished during the plague. In the United States, the CASE COUNT is 7 million or a little over 2% of the community.<\/p>\n But again, there are lockdowns, multi-trillion-dollar packages, and political recriminations. Worldwide deaths are over 1 million or 1\/15th of the Third Plague. And this is also based on a population nearly five times as large as that at the time of the Third Plague. The 19th century Indians would have laughed at us.<\/p>\n Hunger<\/p>\n As stated by author Carly Dodd writing for history, \u201cThe deadliest famine in history took place in China between 1959 and 1961. This catastrophe has often been referred to as one of the greatest human-made disasters, though regional droughts did play a part. The famine was caused by a combination of political and social factors by the\u00a0<\/strong>People\u2019s Republic of China, led by Mao Zedong.<\/strong>\u00a0These policies, namely the Great Leap Forward, which began in 1958, and the people\u2019s communes, created a disastrous environment that cost tens of millions of lives.\u201d This is a first-hand account from Yang Jisheng, provided by the Guardian, \u201ca survivor of the famine. In barely nine months, more than 12,000 people \u2013 a third of the inhabitants \u2013 die in a single commune; a tenth of its households are wiped out. Thirteen children beg officials for food and are dragged deep into the mountains, where they die from exposure and starvation. A teenage orphan kills and eats her four-year-old brother. Forty-four of a village\u2019s 45 inhabitants die; the last remaining resident, a woman in her 60s, goes insane. Others are tortured, beaten, or buried alive for declaring realistic harvests, refusing to hand over what little food they have, stealing scraps, or simply angering officials.\u201d And by the way, this resulted from type of socialist Nirvana that Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez would drag the United States.<\/p>\n There were famines in ancient Rome. Famines in medieval China. A famine in Bengal, perpetuated by the practices of the British East India Company, a true exemplar of crony capitalism, saw the deaths of nearly 10 million Indians due to lack of food.\u00a0 Again, the poor Indians died. The wealthy British were the obese ones.<\/p>\n And compare this to the lamentations of \u201cfood insecurity\u201d in the United States.\u00a0Is this to say we do not have severe problems in the United States? We are virtually bankrupt economically. Our politics are increasingly devoid of serious address to the issues at hand. And there is racism, hunger, and disease within our borders.<\/p>\n But these three are not the real issues of our time but rather the real issues ambitious people use to scare American citizens into providing support and resources. There is no better place to live in humankind’s history than in the 21st century, capitalistic based; limited government-managed America. Our real lamentation is that so few Americans truly understand what they have, and seem willing to give away.<\/p>\n Elections that ACTUALLY Did Change Everything<\/strong><\/p>\n August 2020<\/p>\n This past week, at the Democratic National Convention, Senator Bernie Sanders stated, \u201cThis election is about preserving our democracy.\u201d This sentiment was echoed by, well, nearly everyone else on the docket. In an August 29, 2019 piece for the Washington Post, author Avi Selk says, \u201cNow I know every election everyone says, \u2018This is the most important election of our lifetime,\u2019 but this time it actually is the most important.\u201d Earlier that month, Joe Biden stated, \u201cYou all know in your gut, not because I\u2019m running, that this is maybe the most important election, no matter how young or old you are, you\u2019ve ever voted in.\u201d Running in 2016, Donald Trump stated, \u201cYou\u2019re going to look back at this election, and say this is by far the most important vote you\u2019ve ever cast for anyone at any time.\u201d Adds Selk, \u201cPresident Harry S. Truman spent much of 1952 saying the same thing about that year\u2019s election, in which he stumped for Democrat Adlai Stevenson to succeed him.\u201d John F. Kennedy called his race the most important since Abraham Lincoln\u2019s. In 2000, actor Baldwin was so distraught at the prospect of a win by George W. Bush that he promised to move to Canada. He stayed and a good thing for him because Tina Fey may not have saved his foundering career if he were in some hut north of Manitoba.<\/p>\n How does the discerning political analyst separate the critical elections from the rhetoric instilled by politicians and their minions who wish to drive up donation levels? First off, there are specific, critical issues that neither party will touch.<\/p>\n Candidates love to talk about jobs and the economy and how they are the ones to eliminate inequality, but you will never hear them address the greatest equality within the Republic; current government services vs. future ones, and the young vs. old. For all of Bernie pablum about Billionaires, there are not enough rich people to pay for the deficits created by wealth transfers for social security, pensions, and Medicare. So on what is arguably the most significant issue, there is consensus no matter who gets elected. Entitlements are untouchable.<\/p>\n That being said, real transformative, landscape-altering elections contain two elements; the imposition of significant, long-lasting government institutions that rely on governmental subsidies and the alteration of the parties themselves.<\/p>\n In the 1800s, five critical elections transformed the trajectory of the nation. The first was in 1800 itself. The transformative moment came after the election. The electoral vote tied meaning that Jefferson and Burr had to go to the House to determine the winner, but it was the first time in four elections that the incumbent lost. What would the authoritarian Adams do? Not a lot as it turns out. Washington gets the right amount of glory for setting a precedent for the peaceful transfer of power, but he never lost. It was one thing to hire someone. There is always a honeymoon in that. It is another to see the character of a human when they are fired.<\/p>\n Twenty-eight years later occurred another transformative election. The incumbent lost, perhaps not ironically, it was another Adams, but the winner was transformative. Andrew Jackson was the first non-founder elected president, and his refurbished Democratic Party won 6 out of 8 presidential elections between 1828 and 1860. As the Brittanica.com website states, \u201cThe election of 1828 was arguably one of the most significant in United States history, ushering in the era of political campaigns and paving the way for the solidification of political parties.\u201d Jackson also introduced authoritarianism that was lacking from his six predecessors.<\/p>\n Whether it was destroying the 2nd Bank of the United States, stopping secession talk from South Carolina, or sending hundreds of native Americans to their doom on the trail of tears, Jackson was driving the narrative. Because the actual machinery of government was small, and Congress had the power, the country would wait another 70 years to see real blue imperial power in the person of Teddy Roosevelt. Jackson did not necessarily build the machinery of the government as 20th-century presidents would do, but he did provide the template of what a president could accomplish if pushed forward hard enough.<\/p>\n In 1954, old Whig elements and members of the free soil party merged to form the Republicans, but their impact would not come for another six years. The 1860 election in which Abraham Lincoln won the White House speaks for itself, and from this point, the Democratic Party once the dominant party of the nation, became far more regionalized with their primary base in the South. According to History.com, \u201cThe election of 1860 was one of the most pivotal presidential elections in American history. The main issue of the election was slavery and states\u2019 rights. Lincoln emerged victoriously and became the 16th president of the United States during a national crisis that would tear states and families apart and test Lincoln\u2019s leadership and resolve: The Civil War.\u201d Subsequently, this change led to consistent policy changes.<\/p>\n The Democratic Party of the late 19th century was anti protectionist and in their Southern voter suppression of Southern, republican, African Americans. Yet one of the issues that divided both parties in this period was the concept of easy vs. hard money.<\/p>\n These policies ended with two elections, one a rare mid-term transformation and the next presidential election. In the election of 1894, in the wake of the Panic of 1893 and the subsequent depression, experienced the single most considerable turnover of the seat in the House of Representatives. Over 125 Democrats lost their positions. In the wake of the worst defeat in Congressional history, the Democrats abandoned their party’s two key planks. The first was bi-metalism in favor of a focus on easy money silver. The second was to become more of a populist party and even anti-business, they began evolving as a pro-labor, anti-business party. This change was cemented by the choice of populist William Jennings Bryan as their standard-bearer in 1896.<\/p>\n Bryan\u2019s opponent, William McKinley, was a civil war hero, ex Ohio Governor, author of the McKinley tariff, and prot\u00e9g\u00e9 of businessman Mark Hanna. A 2020 democrat would not recognize their party in 1892, especially under the leadership of Grover Cleveland.\u00a0 But a modern democrat would have much to like in William Jennings Bryan.\u00a0 Teddy Roosevelt was technically a progressive president that was more about his personality than his policy beliefs. Woodrow Wilson\u2019s new freedom, FDR\u2019s New Deal, LBJ\u2019s Great Society, and the current flirtation of today\u2019s 2020 democrats with socialism stemmed from the 1894 and 1896 elections in which the Democrats took on their populist veneer. According to the Miller Center blog, in an article written by Lewis Gold, \u201cThe Republican victory reflected a winning coalition of urban residents in the North, prosperous Midwestern farmers, industrial workers, ethnic voters (except for the Irish) reform-minded professionals. It launched a long period of Republican power lasting until 1932, broken only by Woodrow Wilson’s victory in 1912, which occurred principally because of a split in the Republican Party.\u201d<\/p>\n The historic nature of 1932 was that this election was the twofer. The New Deal provided a host of permanent governmental institutions such as Social Security, but the party was altered. For nearly 70 years, African Americans had been mostly Republican, logically voting for the party of Abraham Lincoln, Thaddeus Stevens, and Charles Sumner. It was the late 19th century democrats who exercised voter suppression and intimidation, and under Woodrow Wilson, lynching in the South averaged over 50 annually. It was under Calvin Coolidge, whose bold law enforcement reduced this heinous acts to less than 10. Just this year, Joe Biden did something that no other presidential nominee has accomplished.<\/p>\n In the primary, he lost Iowa and New Hampshire, badly, and yet came back to win the nomination. His entire success can be pinned on the support of African American representative Jim Clyburn, and the black vote in South Carolina. Mostly, it was core African American voters who drove the direction of the Democratic Party and began with the election of 1932. In an article entitled, \u201cThe Consequential Elections in History: Franklin Roosevelt and the Election of 1832,\u201d written for U.S. News and World Report, author Kenneth Walsh notes, \u201cThe electorate had, in effect, taken nearly 150 years of tradition upholding limited government and, in their anxiety and anger, thrown it out the window.\u201d There is an argument that with the defeat of the Bourbon Democrats in 1894, Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson had laid the groundwork for this belief, but it is without a doubt that in 1932 this concept of permanent governmental involvement realized its inception. \u201che became one of the nation’s most beloved presidents and built a vast and powerful governing coalition. It consisted in part of working-class whites, union members, immigrants, African Americans, Southern whites, Catholics, Jewish voters, and city dwellers. This coalition dominated American politics for more than a generation\u2014another key part of FDR’s legacy,\u201d Adds Walsh.<\/p>\n But the whirlwind of the Great Depression, African Americans changed allegiance, a movement cemented by another transformational election of 1964. In that year and 1965, it was Republican legislators who got Johnson\u2019s Civil Rights and Voter Rights through Congress, but people remember presidents, and blacks remember Johnson. As the website History central the \u201cThe election of 1964 was the first election, since 1932, that was fought over real issues. This election brought ideology into American politics.\u201d Lyndon Johnson\u2019s 61% popular vote tally, against just 38% for opponent Barry Goldwater, cemented several movements.<\/p>\n In 2008, a historic election with the first African American president’s election, Barack Obama held the House of Representatives, the Senate, and enjoyed a four v. 4 Supreme Court with Anthony Kennedy as swing. And with all that, did not fundamentally transform the nation, as he wished. The Affordable Care Act has had less effect on healthcare than did George W. Bush\u2019s drug benefit. The Trump Administration has successfully curtailed the Consumer Protection Bureau, and the stimulus bill was just another trillion added to the ever-growing debt bomb. Other than that, most Obama items, including the ban on drilling and Iran treaty, have been rescinded. The difference between Obama and a Harris Administration (Biden will not finish his term) is the appetite for institutional reform. If the next Congress adds two new blue states in the form of D.C. and Puerto Rico, if they pack the Supreme Court and create more new constitutional institutions such as the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, and they rescind the 2nd amendment, then this will be the most important election since 1964 and 1932. Two 20th century elections that mattered.<\/p>\n Of the 57 presidential elections that have been held since Washington\u2019s win in 1788, about 6-7 were indeed among the \u201cmost important of our lives!\u201d<\/p>\n The Historical Context of Class Envy, Marxism and the Road to Power<\/strong><\/p>\n August 2020<\/strong><\/p>\n In 133 BCE, the Roman people elected Tiberius Gracchus as Tribune. Building on centuries of class rivalry, Tiberius\u2019 goal was to redistribute \u201cstate\u201d land to the poor. In Mary Beard\u2019s magisterial history of Rome entitled SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, the author states, \u201cWhatever the economic truth, however, he certainly saw the problem in terms of the displacement of the poor from farming land.\u201d But was this entirely about the poor? Beard contends that behind the populism lay something else, \u201cSome observers at the time, and since, claimed that far from being genuinely concerned with the plight of the poor, Tiberius was driven by a grudge against the Senate, which had humiliatingly refused to ratify a treaty he had negotiated.\u201d The rather high handed nature of his actions, along with the logical animosity of wealthy Romans and Italians who lost the opportunity to profit from the land, led to the murder of Tiberius in 133 BCE. And Americans lament the state of politics today.<\/p>\n Ten years after Tiberius\u2019 death, his populism, based on class warfare, was taken up by Gaius Gracchus, his younger brother. Gaius planned to assist the poor of Rome with a grain supplement. This grain provision was not quite welfare in the 20th-century understanding but rather having the state subsidize food purchasing. Like all state-provided giveaways, this program was converted from expediency to entitlement, and further expanded by subsequent Roman governments extending into the Imperial age.<\/p>\n Additionally, because the state provided it, it soon took on the concept of \u201cfree\u201d provision. However, much of it was subsidized in turn by taxing the provinces or extracting concessions from allies. As Beard states, this was not just about helping the poor, \u201cThe debate was about who had a claim on the property of the state and where the boundary lay between private and public wealth.\u201d<\/p>\n From 1836 and for the next ten years, a group in Britain called the Chartists, led by William Lovett made a series of demands upon the British government. These demands were for greater political participation but were based on the needs of the working class. In 1832, voting rights were provided to middle classes in Britain but depended on property ownership. It was mainly this provision that the chartists wished to omit. The charter itself was called the People\u2019s Charter, and Lovett is described as an \u201cactivist.\u201d Though the United States is blessed (or cursed) with thousands of these creatures in 2020, it was rare in the 19th century. Lovett himself stated. \u201cThe franchise being confined to a small portion of our population, and that portion-controlled and prejudiced to an incalculable extent by the wealthy few.\u201d<\/p>\n These debates, nearly 1900 years apart, are ones that an avowed socialist, or Marxist, would revel. Not just in theoretical or economic terms, but political. When Barack Obama made his infamous \u201cyou did not build that\u201d speech, he touched on the divide between public spheres, such as roads leading to a given business, and the private company itself. The obvious rejoinder is that the road does not get built without the tax revenues collected from the business. The state can only produce \u201crevenue\u201d in the context of taxation.<\/p>\n Writing in 2019, columnist George Will noted socialism, \u201cThis means having government distribute, according to its conception of equity, the wealth produced by capitalism. This conception is shaped by muscular factions: the elderly, government employees unions, the steel industry, the sugar growers, and so on and on and on. Some wealth is distributed to the poor; most goes to the \u201cneglected\u201d middle class. Some neglect: The political class talks of little else.\u201d Will is describing American politicians who knew what the Gracchi understood; that he who does the redistribution, gets the votes.<\/p>\n One of the reasons that socialism, and Marxism, still prevails, unlike fascism, is that socialism sets aside any debate between public and private. It carries the perception that when everything is public, everything will accrue to the benefit of those who need it most, the poor. In an imagined, revised Obama speech, the phraseology would be that you did not build any of it-the state did. If the state builds the road, and the factory, and runs the farm, and decides who gets what, then the citizen is free to participate in any of those activities without the anxiety of success or failure. As Marx noted in the Communist Manifesto, \u201cIn place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.\u201d The ability to pick and choose, be an engineer and be an expert in comparative literature, and enjoy the same fruits regardless of vocation is pretty heady stuff for that comparative literature devotee.<\/p>\n The problem with the utopianism of Marxism is that what the state can give, the state can then take away, and since the citizen has abrogated their rights to the state, there is no recourse. This unchecked state power is one of the many reasons why Marxism fails its core goal. In communist countries, the inequality between the have and have nots always increases as the rulers take more power and wealth.<\/p>\n And then there is the Omni-present, fear factor with capitalism. Because there is no clear, from the top down, discernible plan, markets will rise, and on occasion, markets will fall. The fact that it was often state intervention, Hoover\u2019s Smoot Hawley Tariff, or Barney Frank\u2019s demand for low-income housing loans was but two examples. The relationship between state interventions and subsequent economic crises is one of the most reported stories of economic history.<\/p>\n Yet the fear factor is in play. In an article for the Financial Times written in 2018, author Adam Tooze notes, \u201cthe world of globalized free-market capitalism we inhabit today has much in common with the world about which Marx wrote in the mid-19th century. \u201cIt is the Marx of the 19th century,\u201d he tells us, \u201cwho can attract the people of the twenty-first\u201d. What speaks to us today is the true Marx of the mid-Victorian period, not the traduced Marx of the 20th-century state ideologies.\u201d Whether it be the 2nd century BCE Rome, 19th century Europe, or 21st century the United States after the bank meltdown of 2008, there are financial calamities that adversely affect the poorest in society. These are the perpetually fertile ground for the seeds of Marxism. Under the aegis of limited government, capitalist systems, humanity enjoys prosperity that would have been unheard of in Marx\u2019s 19th century.\u00a0But there are still fears, and Marxists need to make a living too, so the concerns are stoked.<\/p>\n Populism can take on many different forms, and indeed, fascism was one of those, but. In contrast, the worst mass murderers of communism have primarily targeted their people for destruction; fascism will be forever linked with World War II in general, and with Adolph Hitler in particular. For those among the German people that executed, and there were millions, Hitler also targeted groups of non-Germans. When Hitler began his totalitarian regime in the 1930s, the world looked away even when he took Austria and Czechoslovakia. Only when he invaded Poland did France and England intervene. And even then, the United States stayed on the sidelines, and the Soviets went into Poland on the other side. What if Stalin had exercised an openly genocidal campaign against the Bulgarians, Iranians, or Serbians instead of Cossacks and Ukrainians? One of the clear understandings of Marxist thugs is to keep their oppression within their borders, counting on the weakness and capitulation of other nations to prevent outside interference.<\/p>\n Another aspect of the endurance of class warfare is it is only good politics. Whenever a politician, whether it be Tiberius Gracchus or Bernie Sanders, speaks of inequality, it is always about relative positions, not total outcomes. The Rome of Gracchus\u2019 day was the preeminent state of its time having vanquished every foe from the Carthaginians to the Spanish to the Greeks. To be a Roman was infinitely better than to be one of the poor sods from Carthage after Cato the Elder got through with it. But the nascent Roman Empire brought incredible wealth to individual families such as the Scipios, and Gracchus could exploit that envy for political gain. The people of the United States spend $75 billion on sports entertainment and nearly another $50 billion on streaming services. But there are inequalities. A person worth $10 million has 1\/10th of 1% of Jeff Bezos\u2019s wealth, but that does not make the multimillionaire poor. But talking of relative wealth between wealthy Americans and impoverished people say in Cuba does not accrue votes or power. So class envy and watered-down Marxism it is.<\/p>\n Will notes, \u201cThe temptress of socialism is constantly luring us with the offer: \u201cgive up a little of your freedom, and I will give you a little more security.\u201d As the experience of this century has demonstrated, the bargain is tempting but never pays off. We end up losing both our freedom and our security.\u201d<\/p>\n Writing National Review in 2014, Tim Cavanaugh noted, \u201cMarx has never vanished from the academy. The stubborn refusal of applied Marxism to produce anything but mass murder merely led to efforts to reframe the philosophy.\u201d One of the excellent rejoinders of classists, and their Marxist ideology, is that it has never been adequately implemented. Given that at least 15 nations have attempted some form of Marxism, and all came later to regret the attachment deeply, it is safe to say it simply will not work. Yet this also misses the point of Marxism itself, as Cavanaugh states, \u201cDefining the Soviet and Maoist states as failed experiments in social justice misses the point. They were attempts to put the essential violence of Marxism in motion, and they succeeded on a spectacular scale. Violence is not incidental to Marx. It\u2019s Throughout his work; it\u2019s there between attacks on \u201cvampire capital\u201d and \u201cJewish hucksterism.\u201d Some samples:<\/p>\n And of all these comments, the one that is also quite attractive to movements, including in 2020, the Black Lives Matter movement, which has avowed Marxists leading the charge but positions themselves accordingly with comments such as rejection of two-parent households for \u201cthe collective.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0The logical extension of class envy and class warfare is accumulation of power for the state. The result of collectivization is a disincentive to improve. The result of political or economic coercion is violence. These are horrible things, but marvelous things if one wishes to accrue political power.<\/p>\n Defund the University<\/strong><\/p>\n July 2020\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n For centuries, the United States has relied upon the university system to educate our young.<\/p>\n In that location, they learned of religion, civics, languages, culture, writing, philosophy, and history. There were absolute basics: platonic philosophy, critical thinking, and the values captured in the Enlightenment.\u00a0 Philosophers were taught there.\u00a0The ones that shaped the most successful, most prosperous nation to have ever existed in the history of humanity were part of the canon. These philosophers, such as Locke and Montesquieu, shaped the vision for this nation, a vision that still exists. “When you consider what an enormous windfall gain it is to be born in America, it is painful to hear some people complain bitterly that someone else got a bigger windfall gain than they did,” Noted Thomas Sowell.\u00a0\u00a0But these beliefs, and the people who built them, are no longer taught. It is time to rethink the University.<\/p>\n The concept of the University goes back millennia, but the University of Bologna, founded in 1088, has never been out of operation. And the view of education is supported by some of the greatest luminaries of the past 100 years. Nelson Mandela stated,\u00a0“Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world.” Doctor Martin Luther King Junior noted, “The function of education is to teach one intensively and think critically. Intelligence plus character \u2013 that is the goal of true education.” G.K. Chesterson said, “Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.”<\/p>\n I try to avoid what I call the tyranny of the anecdote. These are personal stories that take individual life experiences and extrapolate an entire narrative about complex systems through the vision of a single person. One may have had an incident with an immigrant. But this does not mean that all immigrants are bad. One may have lost a job, but this does not mean that capitalism is inherently evil or exploitative. A boss may have treated one differently, but this does not mean that the system necessarily is discriminatory. I write all of this and then go back on my own rule and provide the following anecdote.<\/p>\n My undergraduate degree was in history with a minor in education. This major meant I was able to secure two, and only two types of jobs.\u00a0Either I was to be a university professor or a high school social studies teacher. There are about 4,000 history professorial jobs in the United States. Given an average 40 year tenure, that means that at any given moment, there about 100 openings throughout the United States. And of these, many either required or wished for, Master and Ph.D. style candidacies. Having already accrued significant debt, the thought of two or three years of college was not in the cards. Many history majors do pursue legal degrees or go into journalistic vocations. Additional education would have meant even more schooling, so high school social studies was the only logical path.<\/p>\n I was hired at one high school as a long term substitute at reasonably low pay. I was able to sustain myself but not pay down any debt, much less begin to save money. At the end of a highly successful year (based on principal, dean, fellow teachers, student, and parental feedback), I was rewarded with being laid off. At the ripe old age of 23, I was the junior staffer. The incompetence and burn out of several of the other social studies teachers were beside the point. The unions reactively protect all members regardless of ability.<\/p>\n A merit system would have precluded the union’s concept, so the seniority system ruled, as it does to the present day. Frustrated beyond measure, I left teaching, something I miss to this day and help compensate with my blog and podcast. But back then, the bills had to be paid, and I was not going to wish for a Bernie Sanders to come along and transfer my debt to some other poor sod.<\/p>\n Upon the advice of my father, I went into business, sales to be exact. I started at a small paper merchant that, if memory serves, was not dissimilar to Dunder Mifflin excepting one notable distinction. Instead of the semi-incompetence of Michael Scott, I was trained by an entrepreneur named Sammy Chaiken. One of the first things Sammy taught me was the Hollywood shibboleth of the fast-talking sales person was a fiction. Instead, the best sales reps listen, probe, discover the specific needs of their clients, and endeavor to deliver something others cannot. I learned the importance of product superiority, or lack thereof, quality service, and low pricing.<\/p>\n Given the challenges of the market and Sammy’s frugality around employee pay, I left his firm after two years working in a billion-dollar company. Later I left sales for my more natural milieu of marketing. And the lucrative nature of that vocation is how I am now able to spend my time working this blog. And what did all of those classes and the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on them mean? Almost nothing. I possess a few fond memories of those days and some friends, but the successes in my life were, despite, not because of, my university experience.<\/p>\n I later obtained a Masters of Business Administration from the right school in Chicago, but again, my real-world learning came on the job. Simple question. If you never attended a single university class, would your career have been negatively altered? My answer is no.<\/p>\n\n
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