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Published: 23 July 2020

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    The Confederacy has been the excuse for some of today's rioting, property destruction and grossly uninformed statements. Among the latter is the testimony before the House Armed Services Committee by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley in favor of renaming Confederate-named military bases. He said: "The Confederacy, the American Civil War, was fought, and it was an act of rebellion. It was an act of treason, at the time, against the Union, against the Stars and Stripes, against the U.S. Constitution."
    There are a few facts about our founding that should be acknowledged. Let's start at the beginning, namely the American War of Independence (1775-1783), a war between Great Britain and its 13 colonies, which declared independence in July 1776. The peace agreement that ended the war is known as the Treaty of Paris signed by Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, John Jay and Henry Laurens and by British Commissioner Richard Oswald, on Sept. 3, 1783. Article I of the Treaty held that "New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be free sovereign and Independent States."
    Delegates from these states met in Philadelphia in 1787 to form a union. During the Philadelphia convention, a proposal was made to permit the federal government to suppress a seceding state. James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, rejected it. Minutes from the debate paraphrased his opinion: "A union of the states containing such an ingredient (would) provide for its own destruction. The use of force against a state would look more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound."
    During the ratification debates, Virginia's delegates said, "The powers granted under the Constitution being derived from the people of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression." The ratification documents of New York and Rhode Island expressed similar sentiments; namely, they held the right to dissolve their relationship with the United States. Ratification of the Constitution was by no means certain. States feared federal usurpation of their powers. If there were a provision to suppress a seceding state, the Constitution would never have been ratified. The ratification votes were close with Virginia, New York and Massachusetts voting in favor by the slimmest of margins. Rhode Island initially rejected it in a popular referendum and finally voted to ratify -- 34 for, 32 against.
    Most Americans do not know that the first secessionist movement started in New England. Many New Englanders were infuriated by President Thomas Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase in 1803, which they saw as an unconstitutional act. Timothy Pickering of Massachusetts, who was George Washington's secretary of war and secretary of state, led the movement. He said, "The Eastern states must and will dissolve the union and form a separate government." Other prominent Americans such as John Quincy Adams, Elbridge Gerry, Fisher Ames, Josiah Quincy III and Joseph Story shared his call for secession. While the New England secessionist movement was strong, it failed to garner support at the 1814-15 Hartford Convention.
    Even on the eve of the War of 1861, unionist politicians saw secession as a state's right. Rep. Jacob M. Kunkel of Maryland said, "Any attempt to preserve the union between the states of this Confederacy by force would be impractical and destructive of republican liberty." New-York Tribune (Feb. 5, 1860): "If tyranny and despotism justified the Revolution of 1776, then we do not see why it would not justify the secession of Five Millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861." The Detroit Free Press (Feb. 19, 1861): "An attempt to subjugate the seceded States, even if successful, could produce nothing but evil -- evil unmitigated in character and appalling in extent." The New-York Times (March 21, 1861): "There is a growing sentiment throughout the North in favor of letting the Gulf States go."
    Confederate generals fought for independence from the Union just as George Washington fought for independence from Great Britain. Those who label Robert E. Lee and other Confederate generals as traitors might also label George Washington a traitor. Great Britain's King George III and the British parliament would have agreed.
    Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
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Published: 15 July 2020

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    The Michigan State University administration pressured professor Stephen Hsu to resign from his position as vice president of research and innovation because he touted research that found police are not more likely to shoot black Americans. The study found: "The race of a police officer did not predict the race of the citizen shot. In other words, black officers were just as likely to shoot black citizens as white officers were." For political reasons, the authors of the study sought its retraction.
    The U.S. Department of Education warned UCLA that it may impose fines for improperly and abusively targeting white professor Lt. Col. W. Ajax Peris for disciplinary action over his use of the n-word while reading to his class Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" that contained the expressions "when your first name becomes "n----r," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are). Referring to white civil rights activists King wrote, "They have languished in filthy, roach-infested jails, suffering the abuse and brutality of policemen who view them as 'dirty n----r-lovers.'"
    Boston University is considering changing the name of its mascot Rhett because of his link to "Gone with the Wind." Almost 4,000 Rutgers University students signed a petition to rename campus buildings Hardenbergh Hall, Frelinghuysen Hall and Milledoler Hall because these men were slave owners. University of Arkansas students petitioned to remove a statue of J. William Fulbright because he was a segregationist who opposed the Brown v. Board of Education that ruled against school segregation.
    The suppression of free speech and ideas by the elite is nothing new. It has a long ugly history. Galileo Galilei was a 17th-century Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes called "father of modern physics." The Catholic Church and other scientists of his day believed that the Earth was the center of the universe. Galileo offered evidence that the Earth traveled around the sun -- heliocentrism. That made him "vehemently suspect of heresy" and was forced to recant and sentenced to formal imprisonment at the pleasure of the Inquisition and was later commuted to house arrest for the rest of his life.
    Much of today's totalitarianism, promotion of hate and not to mention outright stupidity, has its roots on college campuses. Sources that report on some of the more egregious forms of the abandonment of free inquiry, hate and stupidity at our colleges are: College Reform and College Fix.
    Prof. William S. Penn, who was a Distinguished Faculty Award recipient at Michigan State University in 2003, and a two-time winner of the prestigious Stephen Crane Prize for Fiction, explained to his students, "This country still is full of closet racists." He said: "Republicans are not a majority in this country anymore. They are a bunch of dead white people. Or dying white people."
    The public has recently been treated to the term -- white privilege. Colleges have long held courses and seminars on "whiteness." One college even has a course titled "Abolition of Whiteness." According to some academic intellectuals, whites enjoy advantages that nonwhites do not. They earn higher income and reside in better housing, and their children go to better schools and achieve more. Based on that idea, Asian Americans have more white privilege than white people. And, on a personal note, my daughter has more white privilege than probably 95% of white Americans.
    Evidence of how stupid college ideas find their way into the public arena can be seen on our daily news. Don Lemon, a CNN anchorman, said, "We have to stop demonizing people and realize the biggest terror threat in this country is white men, most of them radicalized to the right, and we have to start doing something about them." Steven Clifford, former King Broadcasting CEO, said, "I will be leading a great movement to prohibit straight white males, who I believe supported Donald Trump by about 85 percent, from exercising the franchise (to vote), and I think that will save our democracy."
    As George Orwell said, "Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them." If the stupid ideas of academic intellectuals remained on college campuses and did not infect the rest of society, they might be a source of entertainment -- much like a circus.
    Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
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Published: 15 July 2020

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        Between 2 million and 3 million Americans will die!
        That was the prediction from "experts" at London's Imperial College when COVID-19 began. They did also say if there was "social distancing of the whole population," the death toll could be cut in half, but 1.1 million to 1.46 million Americans would still die by this summer.
        Our actual death toll has been about one-tenth of that.
        Nevertheless, Imperial College's model was extremely influential.
        Politicians issued stay-at-home orders. They said we must trust the "experts."
        "Follow the science. Listen to the experts. Do what they tell you," said Joe Biden, laughing at what he considered an obvious truth.
        But "there is no such thing as "the science!" replies science reporter Matt Ridley in my new video about "expert" predictions. "Science consists of people disagreeing with each other!"
        The lockdowns, he adds, were "quite dangerously wrong."
        Because Imperial's model predicted that COVID-19 would overwhelm hospitals, patients were moved to nursing homes. The coronavirus then spread in nursing homes.
        Ordering almost every worker to stay home led to an economic collapse that may have killed people, too.
        "The main interventions that helped prevent people dying were stopping large gatherings, people washing their hands and wearing face masks, general social distancing -- not forcing people to stay home," says Ridley.
        Even New York Governor Andrew Cuomo now admits: "We all failed at that business. All the early national experts: 'Here's my projection model.' They were all wrong."
        If he and other politicians had just done just a little research, then they would have known that Imperial College researchers repeatedly predict great disasters that don't happen. Their model predicted 65,000 deaths from swine flu, 136,000 from mad cow disease and 200 million from bird flu.
        The real numbers were in the hundreds.
        After such predictions were repeatedly wrong, why did politicians boss us around based on those same "experts" models?
        "If you say something really pessimistic about how many people are going to die," explains Ridley, "the media want to believe you. The politicians daren't not believe you."
        This bias towards pessimism applies to fear of climate change, too.
        Thirty-two years ago, climate "experts" said rising seas would "completely cover" the islands of the Maldives "in the next 30 years." But now, 32 years later, the islands are not only still there, they're doing better than ever. They're even building new airports.
        "Climate change is real," says Ridley, "but it's not happening nearly as fast as models predicted."
        Models repeatedly overpredict disaster because that's "a very good way of attracting attention to your science and getting rewarded for it," says Ridley.
        One more example: For years, "experts" predicted an oil shortage. President Jimmy Carter warned, "The oil and natural gas we rely on for 75% of our energy are simply running out." All the "experts" agreed.
        But as the demand for oil grew, oil prices rose. That inspired entrepreneurs to invent new ways of getting more oil and gas out of the same rocks. They succeeded so well that America now has so much oil and gas that we sell some to other countries.
        Ridley's new book, "How Innovation Works," shows how innovators prove "experts" wrong all the time.
        He points out that the founder of Digital Equipment Corporation once said: "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
        Microsoft's CEO confidently said: "There's no chance the iPhone is going to get significant market share."
        New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote that because "most people have nothing to say to each other... the Internet's impact on the economy (will be) no greater than the fax machine's."
        Of course, not all experts are wrong. Useful experts do exist. I want a trained civil engineer to design any bridge I cross.
        But Ridley points out: "There is no such thing as expertise on the future. It's dangerous to rely too much on models (which lead politicians to) lock down society and destroy people's livelihood. Danger lies both ways."
        John Stossel is author of "Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media." For other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com.
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Published: 08 July 2020

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        Dr. Thomas Sowell has just published "Charter Schools and Their Enemies." He presents actual test scores of students in traditional public schools and charter schools on New York State Education Department's annual English Language Arts test and its Mathematics Test. Sowell gives the results of student tests in charter schools such as KIPP, Success Academy, Explore Schools, Uncommon Schools, Achievement First as well as the traditional New York City public schools. On the English Language Arts test, a majority of charter school students, most of whom were black or Hispanic, tested proficient or above. Their achievement ratio was nearly 5 to 1. On the Mathematics test 68% of charter schools' 161 grade levels had a majority of students testing proficient. In the traditional public schools, 177 grade levels, just 10% had a majority of their student testing proficient.
        In April 2019, The Wall Street Journal reported that 57% of black and 54% of Hispanic charter school students passed the statewide ELA compared to 52% of white students statewide. On the state math test, 59% of black students and 57% of Hispanics at city charter schools passed as opposed to 54% of white students statewide.
        Sowell says: "In a realm where educational failure has long been the norm -- schools in low income minority neighborhoods -- this is success, a remarkable success. What is equally remarkable is how unwelcome this success has been in many places. What has been especially remarkable is that it has been the most educationally successful charter schools that seem to have drawn the most hostility, both in words and in deeds." The most common form of that hostility are simple legal limits set on the number of charter schools permitted without regard to whether charter schools are producing good or bad educational outcomes.
        The education establishment, having the nation's most powerful labor union, has the ears of political leaders. They see a huge loss potential if more parents are able to opt out of poorly achieving public schools. For example, in New York City there are more than 50,000 students on waiting lists for admission to charter schools. The per-pupil expenditure tops $20,000 a year. If all the students on the waiting list were able to be admitted to charter schools, that would translate into a billion-dollar loss by the traditional public schools. A substantial decline in traditional public school attendance would mean fewer teachers employed. That would mean declining union dues since most charter school teachers are not union members. Charter schools' rate of growth since the 1990s has been significant. From 2001 to 2016, enrollment at traditional public schools rose 1% while enrollment in public charter schools rose 571%.
        Sowell points out that not all charter schools are successful. Failing charter schools can have their charters revoked, cutting off access to public funds. That is in stark contrast to failing and corrupt traditional public schools that continue to dine at the public trough. Successful charter schools are the real threat to traditional unionized public schools. No charter school in Sowell's study has been more successful than Success Academy charter schools in Harlem, Bedford-Stuyvesant and the South Bronx -- and none has been more viciously attacked in words and in deeds. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio explicitly campaigned against charter schools saying: "I am angry about the privatizers. I am sick and tired of these efforts to privatize a precious thing we need -- public education.
        In another venue, Sowell said: "We keep hearing that "black lives matter," but they seem to matter only when that helps politicians to get votes, or when that slogan helps demagogues demonize the police. The other 99% of black lives destroyed by people who are not police do not seem to attract nearly as much attention in the media."
        At a 2016 meeting, the NAACP's board of directors ratified a resolution that called for a moratorium on charter schools. Among the NAACP's reasons for this were that it wanted charter schools to refrain from "expelling students that public schools have a duty to educate" and "cease to perpetuate de facto segregation of the highest performing children from those whose aspirations may be high but whose talents are not yet as obvious." That is a vision suggesting that no black children receive decent educations until all black children receive decent educations. Black people cannot afford to entertain such a vision and other attacks on educational success.
        Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
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