Author: bobreagan13

On May 14, 1948, David Ben Gurion declared the existence of the State of Israel and its independence. Shortly after the news arrived at Washington D.C., President Truman officially recognized the new nation, the United States being the first country to do so. Since then, Israel has been America’s only consistent friend and ally in the North Africa/Middle East region.

As most of us know, Israel was founded as a country to be a haven for Jews, who had been systematically, oppressed, and exterminated since the diaspora beginning in 70 A.D. At least in Europe that oppression was by Christians, notwithstanding their founder was a Jew. Israel’s neighbors, mostly Muslim, opposed the Jewish state from the beginning and, with several exceptions, have not let up for the past 77 years. The most recent atrocity was the October 7, 2023 wholesale murder and hostage taking by the Hamas terrorists from their base in the Gaza strip.

Prime Minister Netanyahu, and the Israeli leadership, understandably sick and tired of the attacks on their citizens. Have responded in kind, though hindered somewhat by the international community. Even, the United States under the prior Administration hedged its bets. One would hope the new one will give its wholehearted support to Israelis.

One lesson for those who deplore the suffering of Gaza inhabitants who are not Hamas is how the American and its allied forces, mainly British, World War II. German and Japanese civilians were subject to relentless bombing and destruction, collateral damage necessary to end the aggression. Neither country has troubled the world since.

We Americans should send birthday greetings to Israel. Someday, perhaps, it will be Happy Birthday.

I am not a basketball fan. Never have been one, and have not paid much attention to college or professional sports as an adult. I live in Dallas, Texas and am an insatiable consumer of news and current events in print and electronic media (radio, television, Internet) and often in the company of colleagues and friends who are sport fans. Consequentially, like everyone else in North Texas and in particular Dallas (other than those who live in caves), I knew about the accomplishments of Luka Doncic, the star of the Dallas Mavericks. His being traded to the Los Angeles Lakers (during the season) was unexpected and extremely disappointing to many fans. The this past week there were protests at least one game where the heckling became so intense that one particularly enthusiastic fan was evicted. Demonstrations against Luka’s trade outside the arena almost matched the intensity of recent political ones. No torches and pitchforks, however.

All this brought back some memories when I was a serious baseball fan, which was quite a long time ago. In the summer of 1959 before I started high school, I became interested in baseball and gained quite a bit knowledge of the historical and current players of major league teams as well as our then local minor-league team in Dallas. Major league games were broadcast on network radio regularly during the season. Networks carried some televised games, one of which was NBC’s “Game of the Week.” At that time the major league teams were concentrated in the Northeast, although there have been some expansion to the West Coast notably the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants in 1958 had located to Los Angeles and San Francisco respectively. Otherwise, the westernmost team in the majors was the Kansas City Athletics, who had moved to that city from Philadelphia earlier in the 1950s.

As a result, in order to be a major-league fan I had to pick a team from another city to root for. My family had migrated to Texas from the Cleveland Ohio area in 1951, so I picked the Cleveland Indians, an American League Team. Pretty good pick for 1959. The star of team was Rocky Colavito. Rocky had the ardor of the Indians’ fans equivalent if not in excess of that of current Maverick fans. He was the American League’s home-run champion, hitting 42 during the 1959 season; in that year he hit four consecutive homers in a game against Baltimore in the Orioles home stadium. Nevertheless, in April 1960, the Indians’ general manager Frank Lane inexplicably traded Colavito to the Detroit Tigers.

This trade brought out the torches and pitchforks, figuratively if not literally, against Lane, who had traded away every player from what had been fairly successful team he had inherited when he became GM in 1957. Lane lasted another year with Cleveland before moving on, possibly because he feared for his bodily integrity. The Indians, however, during the subsequent 34 years never finished a season within 11 games of first place. Rocky Colavito did return to Cleveland for the 1965 – 1967 season and was welcomed back, but the magic was not quite the same. The Cleveland Plain Dealer sportswriter Terry Pluto chronicled the story in The Curse of Rocky Colavito: A Loving Look at a Thirty-Year Slump (1994).

Perhaps Luka will come back to the Mavericks some day. Whether this trade results in the Curse of Luka Doncic remains to be seen.

Alissa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum, better known by her nom de plume Ayn Rand, was born February 2, 1905. She entered the United States during the 1920s, became a citizen, and lived here the rest of her life. She died in March 1982. I mention her birth name because her Russian nativity and early years explain a lot of her thinking and themes.

Rand was born into late imperial Russia and spent her teen and early adult years during the Bolshevik revolution and the early Soviet Union. Born in Saint Petersburg, she was 12 years old when the Bolshevik revolution upended her life. Her father’s pharmacy business was expropriated by the revolutionaries and the family had to leave town. Alissa managed to obtain a secondary education in Crimea and later returned to Saint Petersburg (renamed Leningrad) where she graduated from the State university, after being purged as being “bourgeois” and later reinstated along with a few others at the insistence of scientists. She came to the United States on a visa to visit relatives in Chicago, remained in America, and became a citizen in 1929.

Rand’s writing in the 1930s through the late 1950s consisted primarily of fiction. Her notable works in that genre were Night of January 16th, a courtroom drama; We the Living, a dystopian short novel; The Fountainhead; and her magnum opus Atlas Shrugged, both novel.

In publishing the latter tome — it’s 1,084 pages in the 35th Anniversary edition – Rand stated that she was aware that she was challenging the cultural tradition of 2000 years. If that cultural tradition regards wealth and its pursuit as a vice and poverty as a virtue, denounces entrepreneurs as “robber barons” and portrays them in popular literature and media as villains, Atlas Shrugged certainly challenges it.

These works extol individual freedom and capitalism and are fiercely anti-Socialist and anti-all types of collectivist political and economic systems. After Atlas Shrugged, Rand spent the rest of her career as an essayist and an advocate of the philosophy expounded in her novels — individualism, rational self-interest and what she termed Objectivism. Collectivism is the ultimate evil according to Rand, as the basis of socialism, communism, and fascism. The identity politics of today would certainly draw her ire. ¹

Ayn Rand’s promotion of capitalism and the free enterprise system is matched by several well-known economists, both classical and recent. Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, and Milton Friedman have all extolled the virtues of free markets and the relationship of capitalism to individual freedom. None have supplied the emotional heft to promote that theory in the dismal science of economics that Rand provided in her novels. Or so observes Rainer Zitelmann, writing in the opinion section of the Wall Street Journal, January 30, 2025. ²

Ayn Rand’s condemnation of collectivism, that is, ascribing perceived group characteristics to all individuals in the perceive group, particularly when the group membership is involuntary, is salient. Her essay, published in 1963, in which she said racism was the worst form of collectivism in that it ascribed moral worth and characteristics of a collective of ancestors to individuals, is illuminating. An excerpt is worth repeating here.

“Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage — the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.” ³

A personal note. In the 1960s, and indeed even today, many so-called liberals have characterized capitalism and limited-government conservatism as racist and oppressive towards members of minority groups, at that time mainly black persons living under racial segregation, legal in much of the South, but also cultural and informal elsewhere. The 1964 Republican Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, an outspoken free market and limited government conservative, was denounced as racist. Because I agreed with most (but not all) of his conservative principles, many of my then peers accused me of being inherently racist. Rand gave me the intellectual ammunition to refute such accusations.

1. “Fascism” as well as “racism” and even “democracy”, among other words, have lost their meaning and have become all-purpose epithets. For more on this issue see George Orwell’s 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language” available in numerous sources in print and on line. ↩︎
2. See https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-ayn-rand-contradiction-reason-emotion-capitalism-economics-0c5b12b7? ↩︎
3. The Objectivist Newsletter (September 1963) reprinted in The Virtue of Selfishness, p. 176 (Signet Books 1964) ↩︎

The Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy (JLPP) is a law review at Harvard Law School published by an independent student group. It was established in 1977 as a conservative and libertarian alternative to left-wing oriented publications on campus. It is the flagship law review for the Federalist Society, an organization for like-minded lawyers, students, and other interested persons. The Society has been influential in selection of Supreme Court justices and other federal judges.

The Federalist Society established the annual Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture Series “in Barbara’s memory because of her enormous contributions as an active member, supporter, and volunteer leader” ¹

Bari Weiss gave the 22nd lecture in November 2023, titled “You Are the Last Line of Defense.” It is published in the Spring 2024, Volume 47, No. 2 of the JLPP. Ms. Weiss’ topic is defense of free speech, but also a condemnation of the toleration of anti-Semitism in academia and culture, especially in the legacy and social media, and elsewhere. Ms. Weiss does not seek to ban expression of contrary views; quite the opposite. Her concern is that when viewpoint expression segues into acts of violence and obstruction, particularly when those acts serve to intimidate and prevent expression of opposing viewpoints they must be resisted. She particularly faults the media, legacy and social, and even the current U. S. Government for pusillanimously failing to resist such intimidation. The people of the United Sates of America are the Last Line of Defense.

Bari Weiss is a journalist who has worked for the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and is now a contributor for the German Die Welt and a Substack newsletter “The Free Press” she founded, and has sought to “position herself as a reasonable liberal concerned that far-left critiques stifled free speech.” Ms. Weiss has defended free speech on campus and in the media. She resigned from the New York Times in 2020 in protest over the newspaper’s not defending her against alleged bullying by her colleagues and maintaining that Twitter [prior being purchased by Elon Musk in 2023] “has become [the NYT’s] ultimate editor.”

In her resignation letter Ms. Weiss explains: “As the ethics and mores of [Twitter had] become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space. Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions. I was always taught that journalists were charged with writing the first rough draft of history. Now, history itself is one more ephemeral thing molded to fit the needs of a predetermined narrative. My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views…”²

I commend reading the transcript of her lecture to every one interested. It can be found at the link below. One cannot do Ms. Weiss justice by attempting to paraphrase or summarize her speech. Nevertheless, the following quotation from it that expresses what it means to fight back as a line of defense.

“New York coffee shop owner Aaron Dahan had all of his baristas quit when he placed an Israeli flag in the window and began fundraising for Magen David Adom—the Israeli Red Cross.

“But his café didn’t close—quite the opposite. Suppliers sent him free shipments of beans and cups. Community members picked up shifts for free. There were lines around the block to buy a cup of coffee. The café made $25,000 in a single day.”³

What a great response from those who would not stand idle and cower in the face of such outrage!

Full disclosure: I am and have been a member of the Federalist Society since law school. The Israeli flag flies along with the U. S. flag in front of our home.

Footnotes

1. Barbara Kay Olson was an American lawyer, conservative television commentator, and author. She was a prominent critic of the Clinton administration and wrote two books about Hillary Clinton. Olson was also a frequent guest on news programs and a co-founder of the Independent Women’s Forum. She died a as a passenger on American Airlines Flight 77 that was hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon during the September 11, 2001 Islamist terrorist attacks. Her husband Ted Olson, a founding member of the Federalist Society was Solicitor General in the Bush administration at the time of the attacks. ↩︎
2. https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter ↩︎
3. JLLP at https://fedsoc.org/commentary/fedsoc-blog/22nd-barbara-k-olson-memorial-lecture-by-Bari-Weiss ↩︎

Happy New Year! Here are some of my favorite movie quotes. Anyone who wishes to add, please do so by comment or email.

Sherif Ali: Truly, for some men nothing is written unless THEY write it

— Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

Eleanor of Aquitaine: Love, in a world where carpenters get resurrected, anything is possible.

— The Lion in Winter (1969) 

Lt. General Frank Benson: Never tell a soldier that he does not know the cost of war.

—  Eye in the Sky (2015)

James Donovan (lawyer: I have a mandate to serve you. Nobody else does. Quite frankly, everybody else has an interest in sending you to the electric chair.
Rudolf Abel (Soviet Spy)l: All right…
James Donovan: You don’t seem alarmed.
Rudolf Abel: Would it help?

— Bridge of Spies (2015)

Leslie Benedict: Money isn’t everything, Jett.
Jett Rink: Not when you’ve got it.

Jett Rink: Bick. I’m a rich ‘un. I’m a rich boy. Me, I’m gonna have more money than you ever thought you could have – you and all the rest of you stinkin’ sons of… Benedicts.
Uncle Bawley: Bick, you shoulda shot that fella a long time ago. Now he’s too rich to kill.

— Giant (1956)

Tuco: When you have to shoot, shoot. Don’t talk.

— The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966)

[News paper reporter]: No, sir. This is the west, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.

— The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) 

[Zhivago’s father-in-law]: [A] committee of Rvvolutionary Justice has expropriated my house in the name of the people. Very well, I’m one of the people too!

— Doctor Zhivago (1965) 

[Other gangster]: Rules? In a knife fight?!

— Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

Luke: Yeah, well… sometimes nothin’ can be a real cool hand

Captain: You gonna get used to wearin’ them chains afer a while, Luke. Don’t you never stop listenin’ to them clinking. ‘Cause they gonna remind you of what I been saying. For your own good.

Luke: Wish you’d stop being so good to me, Captain.

— Cool Hand Luke (1967)

Corporal Miller: There’s always a way to blow up explosives. The trick is not to be around when they go off.

— The Guns of Navarone   (1961)

Didont: With luck, no one will be hurt.
Labiche: No one’s ever hurt. Just dead.

— The Train (1964) 

Thomas More: Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!

— A Man for All Seasons (1966)

Eleazar ben Yair: You say you will catch us, and kill us? I invite you to try.
Cornelius Flavius Silva: You invite me to try? Your country is one long and narrow graveyard already; your cities are flatter than your deserts, your temple has been destroyed and most of the survivors are slaves, all for seven years of our ‘trying’. Give us our due, man, we know how to kill.

— Masada (1981) TV series

Martin Howe: People gotta talk themselves into law and order before they do anything about it. Maybe because down deep they don’t care. They just don’t care.

— High Noon (1952)

Julia: The German public toilets are always so clean. So much cleaner than ours in America.

— Julia (1977)

Harmonica: The reward for this man is 5000 dollars, is that right?
Cheyenne: Judas was content for 4970 dollars less.
Harmonica: There were no dollars in them days.
Cheyenne: But sons of bitches… yeah.

— Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)

Little Bill Daggett: I don’t deserve this… to die like this. I was building a house.
Will Munny: Deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it.

Will Munny: It’s a hell of a thing, killing a man. Take away all he’s got and all he’s ever gonna have.
The Schofield Kid: Yeah, well, I guess they had it coming.
Will Munny: We all got it coming, kid.

— Unforgiven (1992)  

Alma as a Girl: My name is Alma and Alma is Spanish for soul. Did you know that?

— Summer and Smoke (1961)

Alva Starr: New Orleans is certainly not a place where a person needs to feel the pain of separation for long.

— This Property is Condemned (1966)

Shane: A gun is a tool, Marian; no better or no worse than any other tool: an axe, a shovel or anything. A gun is as good or as bad as the man using it. Remember that.

— Shane (1953)

Senator: Fred Van Ackerman: What I did was for the good of the country.
Senator: Bob Munson: Fortunately, our country always manages to survive patriots like you.

Senator Seabright Cooley: Haven’t had this much fun since the cayenne pepper hit the fan!

— Advise and Consent (1962)

Devlin Warren: [dusting himself off] Ah, I don’t know what to say. Never begged before. Turned my stomach. I suppose I should have been grateful you gave me the job.
George Washington McLintock: “Gave?” Boy, you got it all wrong. I don’t give jobs, I hire men.

— McLintock (1963)

Atticus Finch: If you just learn a single trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.

—To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

The Dallas Bach Society’s annual performance of Handel’s Messiah has been a Christmas tradition over twenty years. These performances have always been enjoyable and a high point of the season for this writer and family.

A friend once asked me if the Messiah lyrics were an English translation, knowing that Handel was a German, born in Halle, Saxony, and had been the court musician for the Elector of Hannover. They were not.

The English lyrics of Messiah were taken by the librettist Charles Jennens from the King James Version of the Bible. He took most of the selections from the Old Testament; others were from Gospels, St. Paul’s epistles, and Revelation. Jennens had compiled two other Biblical oratorios for Handel, Saul and Israel in Egypt, selections of which are often included in compilations or “greatest hits” albums. Handel wrote the music for Messiah in less than a month, a super feat. Jennens was for some reason disappointed in the result, but given the work’s surviving the test of time, whatever his objections, they were rather misplaced.

There have been several revisions of Messiah, some made by Handel, and later by Mozart and other composers. These edits were not substantive, at least not for the untrained ear, including mine. Some appear to be longer and there have been differences of the size of the chorus. In some, contra-tenors (and in the 18th Century perhaps castrati) sing the alto parts. The version Dallas Bach Society’s Artistic Director and conductor James Richman chose for this 2024 performance was the April 1742 manuscript for the work’s premier in Dublin.

The remarkable feature of Messiah, apart from Handel’s magnificent music, was Jennens’ lyrical selections from the Bible. Of all the numerous versions of the Christian Bible, few have the literary quality and grandeur of the King James Version. Some have maintained that it is the greatest prose ever written in the English language. King James I commissioned a group of 54 scholars, termed ”divines”, to create an Authorized Version in English. These men spent seven years pouring over previous texts and translations including Tyndale’s, Coverdale’s, the Geneva Bible, and others, before the work was printed in 1611. These men were contemporaries of William Shakespeare, who made his own significant contribution to the development of modern English.

It is interesting that the King James Version was made by a committee, belying conventional wisdom.

There is debate over the accuracy and faithfulness to the Greek and Hebrew texts, mainly by those who use the Bible as a textbook to validate their own beliefs — but no matter. King James Version’s significance and value are in the beautiful and inspiring language contained throughout the book. A brief rendition of a passage used by Jennens exemplifies this:

Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.

Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned.

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed.

The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

The phrasing and cadence of this language is, as expressed in the last verse, Wonderful. The beauty of the work of God’s Secretaries, as Adam Nicolson’s 2003 book was titled, coupled with the music of George Frederic Handel, is certainly an inspiration to Christians of all denominations, especially at Christmas, but it has considerable value to those of the purely secular mind as well.

Note: There was a story that the Elector-Prince George of Hannover was annoyed when Handel abruptly resigned as court musician in 1710 and took up residence in Britain. Handel became concerned when the Elector became George I, King of Great Britain that the new king would express his previous annoyance. Not to worry, George was glad to have Handel again and forgave any offense he had taken.

A Wonderful and Merry Christmas to all.

___

References:

Nicolson, Adam, God’s Secretaries, The Making of the King James Bible, HarperCollins Publishers, 2003.

Bucholz, Robert & Key, Newton, Early Modern England 1485 – 1714, Blackwell Publishers, 2004.

Of interest might be a book just published Every Valley by Charles King. it was reviewed by Barton Swain in the December 21, 2024 Wall Street Journal. Swain reports it to be the story of Handel, Jennens, and creation of Messiah. I have not read this book as of today.

It’s funny how some things seem to converge during a time. Last month I received a request from the World War II Museum in New Orleans for a donation. I had previously become a charter member, so it informed me that a could add honorees for service in the War to an on line plaque (see below). As it happened, at home we have been watching a British TV series Foyle’s War a mystery drama about a detective and his cases in Hastings during the war. This past week, I noticed and article by Larry P. Arnn, President of Hillsdale College, commemorating the 150th birthday of Winston Churchill on this past November 30. This prompted me to re-publish a blog post.

Two years ago I wrote and posted an essay on the occasion of Churchill’s birthday. Here is an updated version of “He Saved Us All”

In The American Heritage History of World War II (first published in 1966), C. L. Sulzberger, New York Times columnist (and member of the family that owns that newspaper) wrote this.

“Remember him, for he saved all of you: pudgy and not very large but somehow massive and indomitable; baby faced, with snub-nosed, square chin, rheumy eyes on occasion given to tears: a thwarted actor’s taste for clothes that would have looked ridiculous on a less splendid man… .He fancied painting, at which he was good, writing at which he was excellent, and oratory, at which he was magnificent….

“This was the man, bloodied at Omdurman [an 1898 battle in Sudan] and Cuba, among the Pathans and Boers, long before most of those he led were even born, who guided Britain to victory in World War II — and, one might add, who was the guiding spirit for the whole free world. For had Britain succumbed, as it had ever logical reason to do so in 1940, probably no successful coalition could have been formed.”

Sulzberger, of course, was lauding Winston Churchill, who was born on this day 148 years ago. Churchill took over as prime minister of Great Britain when Hitler’s Germany had run roughshod over all the opposition on the European continent and was threatening that island nation. In spite of a fierce air war, in which the Royal Air Force, inspired by Churchill’s indomitable spirit, managed to shoot down and destroy more than five times the number of warplanes it lost to Herman Goering’s Luftwaffe and effectively won the Battle of Britain. After it became clear that an amphibious invasion was not going to work, Hitler turned to terror bombing of England cities and what became known as the Blitz. Throughout all of this, and for the next four years, Churchill remained steadfast and defiant. His grit led Britain and its empire, along with American allies, to total victory over the Nazi state.

In hindsight, and most historians appear to agree, had Great Britain made peace with Hitler in 1940 when it seemed prudent to do so, Nazi Germany would have won, as it almost did anyway.

On November 30 of this year, sixty years after his death, it is appropriate to commemorate Winston Churchill. He was the man of the 20th century. Where Hitler attempted to destroy Western Civilization, Churchill saved it.

Note: Churchill was Prime Minister from May 1940 until July 1945. After Germany surrendered in May 1945, he called an election, but his party was defeated. He again became PM in 1951 and was Queen Elizabeth’s first (of 17) Prime Minister when she succeeded to the throne the next year upon the death of her father King George VI.

Note: Churchill was Prime Minister from May 1940 until July 1945. After Germany surrendered in May 1945, he called an election, but his party was defeated. He again became PM in 1951 and was Queen Elizabeth’s first (of 17) Prime Minister when she succeeded to the throne the next year upon the death of her father King George VI.

See

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/shows-honorees-data?Account_Number=007-436-826

Arnn’s essay:

https://newcriterion.com/article/one-hundred-fifty-years-of-churchill/?

National and world events today are characterized as Dire Times by many in the various media (mostly anti-social, despite being characterized otherwise) and perhaps even from pulpits and street corners.

Sixty-one years ago today, a Friday as it is again this year, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated — murdered — in Dallas, Texas. I have written previously about where I was and what I was doing and how the news of President Kennedy’s death affected me. Those who might be interested can read that 2020 post.

Sixty-plus-one years ago, and onward for a while, many regarded November 22, 1963 as a day of wrath and doom. At times, especially in the 1960s, it seemed to some of us that we were on the eve of destruction — recall the eponymous Barry McGuire song. Doom was imminent.

It was not, as it turned out, the eve of destruction at all.
In retrospect, the next half century reminds me of the Antrobus family in Thornton Wilder’s play The Skin of Our Teeth: humankind bungling onward, but incrementally upward. There is no way to know whether the nation, or the world, would have been better off, worse off, or about the same if Lee Harvey Oswald had not fired the shots, or if he had missed. We almost had a similar event last July. But contra-factual historical speculation is a fool’s errand.

Dies Irae is Latin for Day of Wrath. These are the first words of a recitation in the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Requiem Mass and other Christian denominations’ liturgy, recited or sung in the sequence preceding the proclamation of the Gospel. Vatican II in the 1960s eliminated its use in the Catholic liturgy as too reminiscent of Medieval negative theology. Its use in other denominations has lately not been obvious. It may have been used and sung in Latin at Kennedy’s funeral. Perhaps its most recognizable musical renditions today are in Mozart’s Requiem and Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique – the latter containing the ominous tolling of a funeral bell.

The first stanza in an English translation of the hymn is “Day of wrath and doom impending, David’s word with Sibyl’s blending, Heaven and earth in ashes ending!”

But the Dies Irae is a long poem and has been abbreviated for musical compositions and for liturgical use. If you look at the whole poem, you see that its finale is not as pessimistic and negative as critics allege. I end this essay with the final stanza and include it here especially for the soul of President John F. Kennedy: “Lord, all-pitying, Jesus blest, Grant them thine eternal rest. Amen.”

Today, November 4 is the eve of the election. An article written by one David A. Graham published today in the Atlantic asks “How Is It This Close? Graham echoes a rhetorical question made by Michelle Obama at a recent rally for Kamala Harris to the effect that at least half of the nation’s population are nincompoops. Graham goes on to presenting a list of supposed vices and character flaws of Donald Trump with undisguised wonder how any one other than a mentally retarded or just stupid, depraved human being could possibly vote for Trump. He follows-up with a much shorter, and rather vague, list of Harris’s supposed virtues.

Whether Ms. Obama actually used the word nincompoop in describing Trump voters, it sums up the sentiment she and her ilk have toward the Clinton “basket of deplorables” and the Biden “garbage” who descend to consider voting for Trump. That is the contempt that is shown by the supposed elites for those who do not share their world view, which includes most Americans who are not Ivy Leaguers (or their equivalent — including Harris) is driving a good of part of the middle to vote for Trump. Who likes to be held in contempt?

An article in the Economist, a British publication widely read in English-speaking places, opined that the class divide in the U.S. today is not wealth, race and ethnicity, or rural vs. urban. It is education, and by that he means possessing a college degree. Well, today the value of a college degree, particularly with the de-emphasis on traditional liberal arts in favor “gender and ethnic studies,” sociology, which means, of course, “social justice,” can be suspect. Furthermore, the denigration by the professoriat of American and most of Western history. That includes casting important historical characters like Christopher Columbus, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson as villains alienates many Americans. Unofficially, and sometimes officially in the context of huge business organizations, the banning so-called ill-defined hate-speech, words, and demanding approved use of use of gender pronouns exposes those who do not publicly accept, non-conformists to fear social shunning. Even some of the hard sciences degrees can be infected by left-wing ideology. One recent study indicates that fewer than fifteen percent of college and university professors lean to the political right, or even the center. Many use their position to expound their political values, and students conform out of fear of bad grades. And many public corporations’ pusillanimous CEOs and boards conform for fear that their stock price will go down for a point of two. The rank and file employees conform out of fear for their jobs.

Education does not, by itself equate with intelligence or real world value sentiments. Many of the most skilled tradesmen and other workers are highly intelligent and productive, but never attended college.

There may be good, or less bad, news. Whichever the way the election tomorrow goes, it is going piss off half the country. But it’s not going to be Armageddon or the Apocalypse. At least I hope not.

The United States of America’s election day is little more than a week away. I believe it is important to tell my acquaintances, friends, family, and other readers how I intend to vote and why.

Donald Trump was not my choice to be the Republican nominee, but “Around here, baby, I’ve learned you get what you can get.” (Note 1)

Trump is the only choice who will protect what I will vote for. So the electors I will vote for are his.

• I’m voting for free market capitalism. Obviously, some regulation of commerce, the exchange of goods and services is necessary. But legislation and rules that masquerade as commercial regulation, particularly by the federal government, can hamstring free enterprise, particularly for small businesses and start-ups. As far as being “authoritarian,” Obama, with his “pen and phone,” and Biden, with his attempts to cancel student debts, ban petroleum production, and mandate electric cars, have been far more authoritarian. Trump’s use of executive orders have been to eliminate or restrict rampant non-legislative rule-making.

• I’m voting for the U.S. to have energy independence. The availability and cost of energy is the principal driver of inflation. Yes, yes, I know the climate may be changing – I am not a denier. But I know history. The earth’s climate has changed many times — without human assistance. Banning fossil fuels, which is the only source of energy that is dense, portable, abundant, and safe is a major part of the left-wing agenda that the other candidate has espoused, no matter what she says on the campaign trail. Anyway, try coercing China and India, whose carbon output is massive compared to the United States, into cutting their fossil fuel use. Won’t happen.

• I’m voting for the First Amendment, that includes freedom for free exercise of religious beliefs, together with freedom of speech and expression. This includes the right to speak opinion and not be censored — by government or public utilities that have (express or implied) government franchises (e.g., social media).

• I’m voting to preserve Second Amendment rights for honest citizens to defend their life and their property.

• I’m voting for the future Supreme Court Justice(s) to protect the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and for the appointment of lower court Federal Judges to do the same. Many members of Congress see their primary function as getting re-elected to their good-paying and prestigious job that they have abrogated the hard choices to administrative agencies that they create. Those agencies have become an oligarchy that is the real threat America’s democratic republic. There are finally sufficient Justices who are reining in that oligarchy. I note that there is consternation among many citizens that the overruling of Roe v. Wade was an abrogation of women’s rights. Regardless of one’s position on the subject of abortion, is should be decided by the people of each state, not by five (or more) lawyers who wear black robes

• I’m voting for the continued growth of retirement funds (401K & IRAs) and the stock markets on which they depend. Those are under threat by some prominent leftists with their promotion of a so-called “wealth tax” to tax unrealized capital gains. Such a tax would cause the collapse of the markets, and destroy the retirement funds, not to mention incentives for investment in enterprise.

• I am voting to maintain the viability and strength of the federal system. Our union is that of states, not provinces. The complaint that, for example, the votes of people in Wyoming count more than the votes of those in California with many time the population is untrue. At the state level, which is where it counts for everyday life, the citizens of the states have equal say with each other. There was a recent cartoon in the daily newspaper when in the first panel the character asked “What is the purpose of the electoral College?” The second panel’s character replied “To protect us from democracy.”(Note 2) Now, I am sure that the sense that the cartoonist wished to convey was not complimentary. “Democracy” has become a sacred-cow shibboleth. But the answer was correct. Democracy, in the sense of 51% majority rule (known as plebiscitary democracy) can be as oppressive and tyrannical, especially to the other 49%, as a monarchy, dictatorship, or oligarchy. The Electoral College serves to mitigate the possibility of ill effects of a pure 51% rule. (Note 3)

• I’m voting for the police to be respected to ensure law & order without which there is no liberty. Full disclosure: I am a former police officer. “Protect and Serve” is the motto seen on police cars and other media. The best way to further that duty is to take lawbreakers off the street. To further that duty prosecutors must do their job and prosecute according to law. Mitigation of social problems is a job for legislatures, primarily at the state level, and the people at large, not social engineering by the executive branch, federal or state

• I’m voting for secure borders and legal immigration, and to stanch human trafficking and drug smuggling. On day one of the current Administration, Biden opened the floodgates. Trump would in good measure close them; his opponent, if elected, will not.

• I’m voting for our staunchest ally in the Middle East, Israel, and its right to exist and defend itself, as its leaders determine. Moral support, intelligence, and supply of necessary materiel to Israel is essential. Please note that I am not advocating direct military action other than defensive air and naval support like the Iron Dome and repelling attacks on shipping in the Red Sea.

• I’m voting for international peace for strength. Trump may be unpredictable in foreign affairs, but that can be a strength. If nothing else, he has had a career being a successful maker. His opponent would have not credibility with Putin, Xi, or Kim. Certainly not with the Ayatollah. A contemporary article by a former Congressman (Republican) from Texas laments that the United States has not yet elected a women for President. Well, that might be a concern to some, but his comparisons are inapposite. Trump’s opponent is certainly no “Iron Lady” Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi, or Angela Merkel. (Note 4)

• Finally, I’m also voting for my Republican candidate for Senate and House of Representatives who will limit the possible harm. If anyone stomach to vote for Trump because of his personality, he or she must vote for the Representative and Senatorial candidate who will oppose the elimination of the Senate’s super-majority rule, the packing of the Supreme Court and other federal courts, and the executive’s attempt to rule by a pen and a phone.

Note 1 — Apologies to Bruce Springsteen, who is for the other candidate. His song is “Tougher than the Rest” in the Tunnel of Love album (1987). Covered by Emmylou Harris (1990) and others.

Note 2 — “B.C.” by Mastroianni & Hart; https://www.gocomics.com/bc/2024/10/12

Note 3 — See David Lowenstein, “What Democracy is Not,” Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, p. 57 (Winter 2024); also, Tara Ross, Enlightened Democracy — the Case for the Electoral College (2004, 2012).

Note 4 — Alan Steelman, “Will Nov. 5 be the next step for American women?” The Dallas Morning News, Sunday, October 27, 2024, Section P, pg. 1. I would also include in the comparison Giorgia Meloni, the rising star Italian Prime Minister who has already shown her mettle. Steelman could have also included Nikki Haley, who will surely be in the arena in 2028.