Although I didn’t know it at the time, he and I have something in common besides writing: we both resigned from the Republican Party in 2016. Neither one of us perceives MAGA as reflective of the great conservative/classical liberalism traditions in America, exemplified by such luminaries as William F. Buckley, Russell Kirk and Charles Krauthammer, but rather as a manifestation of a newly emerged right-wing populism bordering on demagoguery. Once during a recent interview, Will described an offensive comment made by Donald Trump as the latest “sulfuric belch” coming out of Mar-a-Lago.

In 2014, Will had written a column in The Washington Post that made the argument that our presidents “have been too much with us.”

“Promising promiscuously, they have exaggerated government’s proper scope and actual competence, making the public perpetually disappointed and surly,” Will wrote. “Inflating executive power, they have severed it from constitutional restraints.”

There was a time when the occupants of the Oval Office were more distant figures. They weren’t in the news every day. Of course, during times of national crisis, we expect to hear from our presidents, and so we look back on Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “fireside chats” as a form of reassurance during the twin traumas of the Great Depression and World War II.

Today, thanks in large part to the 24-hour news cycle and social media, we are on the receiving end of an endless firehose full of news, commentary and the ever-present visages of the presidents. It’s also good for ratings, clicks and subscriptions. But even back in 2014, Will probably could not have imagined the smothering presence and commentary that presidents generate today. There’s no escape from it short of a backpacking trip into the wilderness that leaves all forms of communication behind, and many of us would probably consider that to be too risky.

The nation has been reading, listening to and watching State of the Union addresses ever since Woodrow Wilson, but can anyone argue seriously that those have not degenerated into little more than political pep rallies, with partisan legislators jumping to their feet and applauding after every presidential declarative statement while the other side of the aisle sits on their hands? Surely, says Will, we can function as a nation without “constant presidential tutoring and hectoring.” He references Grover Cleveland, whom he describes as “the last Democratic president with proper understanding of this office’s place in our constitutional order.”

He argues that while some degree of presidential involvement, leadership and commentary is appropriate, more is not necessarily better. Presidents should not always be trying to take the country somewhere as though it were a parcel to be carried to a new destination. Rather, the country “is the spontaneous order of 316 million people making billions of daily decisions, cooperatively contracting together, moving the country in gloriously unplanned directions.” This writer would emphasize “unplanned” as the key word there.

And so Will reminds us that, it is not the chief executive, but rather the Congress, that is supposed to be the initiating branch of government, the direct representatives of the people.

He goes on to say, rather boldly, that future presidents should suggest to the public that they should tell their troubles to their spouse, their friends or their clergy, and not try to portray themselves as the “empathizer in chief,” insulting the intelligence of the people by pretending to feel their pain.

Finally, Will suggests that future presidents make the following commitment: “I will not try to come to the attention of any television camera more than once a week, and only then if I am convinced that I can speak without violating what will be my administration’s motto: Don’t speak unless you can improve the silence.”

Joseph Filko has taught economics and American government and lives in Williamsburg. He can be reached at jfilko1944@gmail.com.

John F. Kennedy was elected in 1960 by a popular vote margin of 112,000 or about one vote per voting precinct. Every vote does matter.

What’s more difficult to predict are the political and economic outcomes that may occur during any newly elected president’s term(s) in office. Not everything is under their control, nor should it be. Promises made during the campaign season by both the candidate and the party platform in order to get elected may not necessarily be turned into new laws, and even those that do pass muster may be subsequently struck down by the courts.

Soon, voters are going to have to make decisions about both the presidency and also the down ballot races. Doing so compels us to make predictions about the potential consequences of our votes in terms of foreign and domestic policy to include multiple wars and conflicts around the world, economic and regulatory policy, the solvency of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, annual deficits, and the national debt. In addition, there is the future of DEI practices, labor legislation, tax policy, immigration, military spending, climate change and much more.

Overarching all of that is the question of which candidate the nation wants to speak from the “bully pulpit.” Who is the best suited to provide the judgement, courage, decisiveness and moral leadership that the country may need in times of crisis?

This writer has long had two major concerns for the future of our children and grandchildren. They are (1) climate change and (2) progressive economics, the latter leading potentially, by drift more likely than design, to either socialist economics or fascist economics. The road to socialism begins with the nationalization of key American industries and businesses, and the road to fascism begins with ever-increasing government control of private enterprises while maintaining a thin veneer of private ownership, a mere facade, an economy that is capitalistic in name only.

If the latter sounds farfetched, remember the calls by Sen. Elizabeth Warren for “accountable capitalism,” and recall Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg saying that given the choice between democracy and capitalism, he would choose democracy, as if the two can’t coexist. In logic, that’s called a false dichotomy. What that really means in practice is big government control of business, and right on cue, President Biden has been blaming “corporate greed,” not Bidenomics, for inflation. Kamala Harris has promised to “take on price gouging” on Day 1. This, despite that fact that the most recent inflation report was down to 2.9%. But rallying the torches and pitchforks crowd and chasing demons high and far away has long been a tried-and-true campaign tactic for politicians.

Our minds tend to go to the frightening images of Hitler and Mussolini at the mere mention of the word fascism, but it is also a way of running an economy, and probably not one that we want. “Command” economies like fascism and socialism have had poor track records for all of the past century while market economies featuring economic freedom and strong social safety nets have flourished.

Many opponents of Donald Trump have referred to him as a fascist, but at most that describes his authoritarian tendencies, hyper-nationalism and megalomania. But his economic policies of tax cuts, deregulation and the reining in of government agencies are anything but fascist.

In the end, despite my very deep concerns about Trump expressed in previous columns, part of me suspects that it would be less challenging to unwind any damage done by a second Trump administration than it would be to reverse the relentless march of big government and central economic planning likely to continue in 4-8 years of a highly progressive Harris/Walz administration. But that’s domestic policy. Potential foreign policy misadventures are anyone’s guess.

Perhaps the best we can hope for this time around is a divided government in which either the House or the Senate, or both, are under the control of the party opposite from the president. That division of power, plus the precedent of judicial review by the Supreme Court, may serve to restrain the worst impulses of the next administration.

It is frustrating to think of gridlock as our best defense against excess, but the ceding of too much unilateral power to either MAGA or to California-style progressivism may well exact a heavy toll on the American people now and in the future.

Joseph Filko has taught economics and American government and lives in Williamsburg. He can be reached at jfilko1944@gmail.com.

Four years later, Democrats and left-leaning independents, desperate to prevent Bernie Sanders from becoming their nominee, and even more desperate to prevent four more years of Donald Trump, elected Joe Biden. He was billed as a unifier, a moderate Democrat who could heal the nation and return us to normalcy.

But what we got instead was an administration captured by the progressive left, and the result has been a backlash that has resurrected Trump, like the mythical phoenix bird, to the pinnacle of power in the Republican Party.

Last February, this column argued that Trump was entirely unsuited to serve another term as president. It also suggested that, for the good of the country, Biden should not run for reelection and that a Democratic candidate more like the late Hubert Humphrey (1911-1978) should be the nominee of the party.

In the intervening months, Trump has secured the nomination and entirely captured the Republican Party. His vice presidential pick, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, who had once been a scathing critic of former President Trump, experienced a conversion and became a supporter. So have a lot of former critics, many of whom ran against Trump in the Republican primaries. Trump has not changed since the days that they were all so critical of him, but clearly they have.

Meanwhile, Biden has decided not to run for reelection and has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for the nomination. Remarkably, in just a matter of days, the top echelons of the Democratic Party coalesced around Harris, and a lot of pent-up fundraising went through the roof. And, as was the Republican convention, the Democratic convention will be a coronation instead of a contest.

But Kamala Harris is not a unifying moderate. She is a progressive from California, rising to public office in a one-party state, and who is likely to fire up the political right as intensely as ever. Her naming of the folksy but liberal/progressive Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate only solidifies that assessment. As a result, 2024 will be our third consecutive election of desperation with both sides predicting Armageddon if the other side wins. The American people are now condemned to yet another acrimonious election season, and in the end, regardless of which candidate is elected, half of the country will not be supportive of the newly elected president.

My memory may be hopelessly clouded and wistful, but I recall a time when a majority of our population tended to rally around newly elected presidents and hoped they did well, even if they voted for the other person. The key word in that previous sentence is “for.” That’s what we used to do — we voted for somebody.

Today, we vote against somebody, and that’s largely because of something called opposition research. Most of us, for example, can remember when the confirmation hearings for Justice Brett Kavanaugh featured Democrats going all the way back to his high school yearbook trying to dig up dirt. Mitt Romney was accused of bullying in high school. The politics of personal destruction remains the rule of the day.

When were the last informed and civilized presidential debates where the focal points were domestic policy, foreign policy and coherent philosophies of governing? It was during the Obama-Romney debates. We haven’t had one since and are not likely to have any this time around. Instead, both sides will claim that the other is a threat to all that Americans hold dear, and those who regularly watch certain programs on Fox News, MSNBC and other politicized outlets will have their favorite bomb throwers and their usual echo-chamber panelists assure us that this is the most important election in American history.

In response, perhaps the best we can do is to avoid becoming hyperbolic bomb throwers ourselves, especially after the election results are known and the new president, vice president and members of Congress are sworn in. We should, of course, never shrink from our duty to support or oppose things that are reflective of our personal beliefs and values, but we should do so in civil and constructive ways that focus on policy differences as opposed to ugly vitriol. If we continue to reach for the torches and pitchforks, then getting people of competence, character and honor to run for high public office will become increasingly difficult. And we will have ceded the field to opportunists and charlatans. Some would say we already have.

Joseph Filko has taught economics and American government, and lives in Williamsburg. He can be reached at jfilko1944@gmail.com.

One of the most difficult things about writing an opinion column after dramatic events is trying to offer a perspective that has not already been beaten to death by the pundits in the news media. This column will be such an attempt.

With some exceptions, the nation’s political class has called for a return to civilized discussion and mutually respectful disagreement in order to turn down the temperature on our discourse. We’ve heard that before, and this column has been calling for that for years. But our history reveals that we soon return to hyperbole, hyperventilating and open hostility as soon as we perceive the political stakes rising in importance, especially at election time.

The late Charles Krauthammer once said that we crossed the Rubicon when we stopped saying, “I think you’re wrong,” and started saying, “I think you’re evil.” At that point, people come to believe that they are engaged, not in a policy dispute, but in a moral crusade, and we come to believe that all the forces of right and righteousness are on our side. We then suspend all attempts at mutual understanding and start making judgements instead. From there, the natural outcome is the demonization of all who oppose us, and then the temptation of the most emotionally committed or unstable to engage in acts of violence becomes manifest.

It is obvious that we need to “turn down the temperature,” but simply doing that has proven to be only a temporary respite until the next jugular issue comes along. Yes, we buried the hatchet after the last spasm of open hostility, but the problem is that we never forget where we buried it.

What the nation really needs now is a paradigm shift, i.e., a new way of looking at the world around us and seeing it through a different mindset. This writer respectfully suggests that the key word here is interdependence.

When we are very young, we are totally dependent upon others, usually our parents, to provide for us. Then as we grow older, we seek to become independent. We come to the erroneous conclusion that life is a straight-line continuum, beginning with dependence and ending with independence. But that’s wrong. Independence is only the halfway point in what the late Stephen Covey called the “maturity continuum.” The true end point is the realization that we are all interdependent.

The dependent person’s statement is, “I can get what I want from others.” The independent person’s statement is, “I can get what I want on my own.” But the mindset of the mature interdependent person is, “I can get what I want on my own and with the cooperation of others.”

Our mutually hostile political camps have failed to recognize the reality that we live in an interdependent country and an interdependent world. There may be no greater cause of human conflict than trying to behave independently in an interdependent reality. That’s true of families, organizations and nations.

If we would all just recognize that, then we can open ourselves to the idea that seeking win-win solutions is the only way forward. We would come to understand that trying to destroy those with whom we are actually interdependent (win-lose) is ultimately self-destructive. We will never move forward as a society if we continue along our current path of mutual destruction and personal demonization. We must reject all of the self-serving bomb throwers whose influence on the 24-hour news cycle and the social media is exaggerated far beyond their actual acumen. Their programs and posts are destructive, and we need to stop watching, clicking and reposting. Those of us who think we can continue constant exposure to such influences and remain immune are kidding ourselves. Repeat a narrative-reinforcing lie often enough and we will come to believe it.

If we would just listen respectfully to each other with the intent of understanding instead of arguing back, and with the realization that our interdependent reality requires win-win solutions, we just may have a chance to begin working together toward resolving the challenges that face our nation and indeed the entire world.

Joseph Filko has taught economics and American government, and lives in Williamsburg. He can be reached at jfilko1944@gmail.com.

The Chevron case had established that when the intent of Congress in any particular piece of legislation was unclear or open to interpretation that the courts should defer to the expertise of the relevant government agency or department.

This writer has had a longstanding skepticism of people described as experts, and an old definition comes to mind — Expert: “X” is the unknown, and a spurt is a drip under pressure.

While a person may have expertise in a given field, that does not mean that the same person is immune from bias or ideological motivation. The Supreme Court case in question involved a unit of the Commerce Department ordering fishermen to not only have a federal overseer on board their boats, but also to pay that person’s salary and other costs.

Now, what exactly was the scientific expertise required to issue that regulation? That is just one example of the power of government regulators to issue edicts that may or may not have anything to do with scientific expertise. Of course, one could just as easily produce examples where judges would have little to offer in cases where genuine expertise was required, and so the two will remain in tension.

Part of my problem with experts comes from my 46-plus years of experience in the insurance and financial services industry, which has been my other passion along with my study and teaching of economics and political science. Despite those many years, I would never presume to describe myself as a financial expert. In fact, there is no such thing. I am unaware of any accredited institution that grants a pedigree called financial expert. One can become a CFP (certified financial planner) or my own designation of ChFC (chartered financial consultant), but neither designation turns a person into a “financial expert.”

Unfortunately for the consuming public, there are a significant number of people who do bill themselves as financial experts, and as such feel free to render advice, usually on radio shows or in books, across a wide range of financial disciplines. In every case with which I am familiar, the alleged expert renders generic advice that is generally sound and often very helpful. That changes for the worse when they get into specifics. For just one example, it is helpful to encourage people with dependents to acquire life insurance. It may also be helpful to suggest a methodology for determining how much to carry. But to go beyond that and recommend that only one specific type of life insurance should be bought is about as absurd as a family physician having a prescription pad in his or her desk and on every sheet the word “penicillin” is preprinted. One size fits all.

From 1997-2005 I taught an 18-week course titled “Life Insurance” to actuarial science majors at Penn State University. The textbook was about 800 pages long, just in case you thought life insurance was simple. Despite that, I have encountered multiple financial “experts” who recommend that everyone should purchase nothing but 20-or 30-year term life insurance, invest all the money you can in the stock market, and then by the time the term insurance expires you will be so rich you won’t need life insurance. Well, nobody ever went broke in this country selling prescriptions for wishful thinking.

Long experience in the real world has taught me that there is (1) no such thing as a best type of life insurance, (2) no such thing as a best type of investment, and (3) no such thing as a best financial plan. Only individualized prescriptions are acceptable, and those have to be based on a lengthy fact-finding process to include not only facts and figures but also such things as one’s track record of financial discipline, their values and other intangibles that make a mockery of overly generic advice.

Family physicians do not pretend to have all the answers. That’s why they refer us to specialists if necessary. Not every attorney will render complex advice in estate planning. Genuine professionals know their limitations and don’t pretend to know it all. They also commit to continuing education, they diagnose before they prescribe, and above all they never render advice beyond their level of competence. The nation’s self-promoting “financial experts” should confine themselves to what they do best, which is to render sound generic advice and encouragement but avoid straying into specifics in areas in which they are neither qualified, licensed nor regulated.

Joseph Filko has taught economics and American government, and lives in Williamsburg. He can be reached at jfilko1944@gmail.com.

My friend and fellow columnist Dr. Jonathan Stolz recently sent me a study that cited the number of executive orders issued by American presidents all the way back to our beginning. It came as no surprise that the number of such actions was very limited in our nation’s early years. George Washington, who served two terms, issued a total of eight, an average of one per year. Succeeding presidents increased that number slowly but steadily until it exploded under Ulysses S. Grant at 217. Things slowed down a bit until Theodore Roosevelt issued over 1,000; Woodrow Wilson over 1,800; and Franklin D. Roosevelt an astonishing 3,721. Those highs have never been reached again, but Donald Trump issued 220 and Joe Biden has issued 138 as of the study date of June 1.

In Federalist No. 10, James Madison warned of the dangers of faction, and we are seeing the prescience of his concern every day.

But in Federalist No. 47, he warned of another danger, and that was the expansion of one branch of government into a position of dominance over the other two. “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny,” he said.

For Madison, that was not an original thought. He went on to cite Montesquieu (1689-1755), one of the great and influential thinkers of the Enlightenment, and quoted him as having said, “There can be no liberty where the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or body of magistrates” or “if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive powers.”

None of that meant that any of the three branches of government should be entirely unrestrained by the other two. Indeed, that is the very purpose of the checks and balances. The concern is that one branch may seek to expand its powers at the expense of the others, or as we have seen over many years, our legislative branch abdicating its constitutional authority and allowing either the executive branch or the courts to effectively make law either by executive actions or by legislating from the bench. That behavior is a great way to avoid responsibility but no way to run the Congress.

A remark credited to Winston Churchill is: “Never let a crisis go to waste.” Following that dictum, some of our presidents have used “emergencies,” some real and some imaginary, to justify unilateral executive actions. The “climate emergency” (Biden) and the “emergency at the border” (Trump) are recent examples. The National Emergencies Act of 1976 gives an American president broad discretion to declare emergencies, and along with that comes sweeping powers, supposedly temporary. Clearly, that opens the door to potential abuse and actions taken more for political purposes than to address valid emergency situations.

That does not mean that all emergency declarations are unjustified or purely political. When COVID-19 struck the United States a few years ago, and as the number of reported deaths exploded, the American people were justly terrified and looked to their government for answers. In hindsight, we have learned that some of the actions taken were over the top, but we did not know that at the time. While some people saw it as an abusive attempt to expand governmental power, the mass of Americans probably saw it as a well-meaning attempt to get control of a very frightening situation.

Some presidential executive orders do give the appearance of being largely political, and two recent examples are (1) President Biden’s 2022 attempt to forgive college debts in part as a response to the “COVID emergency”. But it was initiated (some would say cynically) only months before Election 2022 and before it could get to the Supreme Court (which eventually struck it down). Now, in defiance of the court, he has (2) announced another student loan forgiveness initiative, and again just months prior to Election 2024 — once again leaving time to impact the vote but little time for this action to reach the court, which does not reconvene until October.

Most of us seem to be accepting of those executive actions we like and upset with those of which we disapprove. We should probably step back from our personal preferences and apply a more thorough and even-handed standard to all expansions of governmental power. As President Ronald Reagan said, a great many of them come at the expense of liberty.

Joseph Filko has taught economics and American government, and lives in Williamsburg. He can be reached at jfilko1944@gmail.com.

Presidential debates continued to be generally respectful and reasonably informative. Competing philosophies and governing principles were discussed along with differences relating to both domestic and foreign policy. Viewers could assess the distinctions and feel that they had learned more by the end of the debate than they had known at the beginning.

All of that changed in Election 2016 and grew even worse in Election 2020, primarily due to the presence of Donald Trump, who either cannot or will not engage in a mutually respectful debate. His rude and bullying behavior brought out the worst in his opponents, Hillary Clinton and then Joe Biden. He has been described accurately as a bull who carries around his own china shop. The result has been to degrade the most recent debates into spraying contests between two skunks, with neither candidate winning and both walking away wet and smelly.

Back in 2012, while my wife and I were still living in State College, Pennsylvania, the home of Penn State University, I had the honor of being invited to join a small group of people whose existence had not been known to me. There were about 15 members, and they came from all walks of life and multiple points of view. The criteria for invitation, as I found out, was not only viewpoint diversity, but also the commitment to listen to each other with the intent of understanding, and then reflecting back what you understood, as opposed to listening with the intent of arguing back. The whole point was not to win arguments, but to increase knowledge and to reach mutual and respectful understanding. Those who were incapable of that were disinvited from the group, and that happened one evening when one of the newest members made a personal attack on another member on the basis of an expressed opinion, claiming that they were ignorant.

The best meeting that we ever held was the time we decided to get together and listen to the first Obama/Romney debate. It had become clear to me that about two-thirds of the group leaned left and about one-third to the right, not surprising in a university town. But this was not a highly partisan group. To the contrary, they saw themselves as honest brokers and were willing to call balls and strikes regardless of political leanings. At the conclusion of the debate, we turned off the television because we didn’t want our discussion to be influenced by the commentariat. After a brief discussion, the consensus was that Romney had prevailed. How refreshing it was to share ideas with informed and honorable people who put intellectual integrity above their personal egos and partisan politics.

For me, the nearest thing to that here in the Williamsburg area are the regular coffee klatches that I have been invited to attend with my dear friend and fellow Gazette columnist Frank Shatz. The small group of regulars who attend don’t always discuss the issues of the day, but when we do, even though our politics are diverse, there has never been a word spoken in anger. Every discussion has been not only mutually respectful, but also informative. It has been a great honor to be invited to that group by Mr. Shatz, and he has become a beloved friend to me and many others. I hope readers will forgive the male reference, but I have had only three people in my life who I would describe as a “Renaissance Man” — one history professor emeritus, one mayor of State College and Frank Shatz.

At the opposite end of the spectrum lie the pending presidential “debates” between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. If past is prologue, they will generate much heat and very little light. I will watch them of course, but only out of a sense of journalistic duty along with a certain degree of morbid curiosity. I will hope for the best, but what I expect to see is hyperbole, fear-mongering and slow-motion train wrecks.

Joseph Filko has taught economics and American government, and lives in Williamsburg. He can be reached at jfilko1944@gmail.com.

But now all of that sensitivity has been thrown to the wind at Columbia and scores of other campuses across the nation, and Jewish students are expected to just hunker down, go to their classes online or transfer to another school while hateful, obviously orchestrated mobs use fear, intimidation, building takeovers and antisemitic rhetoric to harass, intimidate and disrupt the college experience for not only Jewish students, but for the rest of the student body as well.

Add to that the anti-police and anti-American screams and chants that emanate from so many of the participants, and it’s no wonder that people don’t feel safe on campus.

As a result of both their hostility and their ignorance, the protestors claim that everything they are doing is protected by the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech. They couldn’t be more wrong. Without exception, all of our constitutional rights, speech included, exist within boundaries. It’s not a free-for-all where anything goes. The basic principle is that the exercise of one’s rights cannot be done in a way that violates other people’s rights (my right to swing my arms freely ends where your nose begins). One is not exercising free speech rights by blocking bridges and highways or by engaging in property damage. Creating an atmosphere of hatred and fear on a university campus or blocking access to classes or other facilities is not free speech. It is harassment and bullying.

In the present case, the only people who are pleased by what we have been witnessing are Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS, Islamic Jihad, the theocracy in Iran and every other group that hates Israel and the Jewish people. Most of us can surely remember the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville that occurred in 2017 and the chanting of “Jews will not replace us” that was met with such revulsion across the country. As awful as that was, compare what those white supremacists had to say to what is now coming out of the mouths of many of the campus protestors.

In addition, those campus tyrants are demanding both amnesty and immunity from prosecution. Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. The great tradition of classical civil disobedience is that when one knowingly breaks the law in pursuit of a cause, like the Civil Rights Movement for example, then one shows the highest respect for law by willingly accepting the legal consequences of one’s actions. That was the behavior of Martin Luther King Jr. and others in the American Civil Rights Movement, of Gandhi, the liberator of modern India, and of Henry David Thoreau. Dr. King wrote a famous letter to his fellow clergyman from the confines of a jail cell, and it has stood the test of time. No student got out of my American government class without reading it.

One can only demand that the political leadership of this country, as well as the leadership of our colleges and universities, will exhibit the character and the courage to stand up to the anarchy and hatred that has erupted on so many campuses and elsewhere. If the perpetrators of this madness cannot see that they are defeating their own cause, then they’re just going to have to learn the hard way that trying to force something down people’s throats through fear and intimidation is not the way forward for any cause. Any campus administrator who will not put a stop to the worst of what’s happening will lose all moral standing to ever insist on trigger warnings and safe spaces again.

Most of all, our political leadership must continue to speak out against the abusive behavior occurring on our campuses and on public property and not try to equivocate by placating both sides like former President Trump was accused of doing at Charlottesville. Enough is enough.

Joseph Filko has taught economics and American government, and lives in Williamsburg. He can be reached at jfilko1944@gmail.com.

Of all the ways there are to deceive, none is more effective than telling the truth. All that’s needed is to select only those facts which bolster one’s argument while carefully suppressing any information that supports the other side. Exhibit No. 1 is cable news. Perhaps that’s why in a court of law we swear to tell “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” After so swearing, an intentional falsehood can become the crime of perjury. The truth and the whole truth can be very different things.

The late Steven Covey, author of “The Seven Basic Habits of Highly Effective People,” said “if you really want to believe a thing, you can find the data to support it.” For example, if you want to believe that pacifism is a key message of the Bible, you can find verses and passages to support that view. Or if you choose to reject that, you can easily point to precisely the opposite, including the conquest of Canaan in the Book of Joshua where God is described as having stopped the sun in the sky so that a battle could continue. In Ecclesiastes, there is “a time for war, and a time for peace.” In America’s colonial times, certain biblical passages were used to justify slavery and to decree that slaves should obey their masters.

Several years ago, while the American military was still trying to liberate the Afghan people from the Taliban, a local pacifist told me that the antiwar activism of his group was based on biblical teachings. But having once been a Sunday School teacher and taken Bible study classes, I challenged him with chapter and verse indicating the complete opposite. His answer was, “Well, we find those to be very unfortunate parts of the Bible.”

That demonstrates another important point made by Covey, a quote often attributed to the writer Anaïs Nin: “We see the world not as it is, but as we are.”

We all tend to interpret facts and events through the filter of that which we wish to believe. None of us, to include this writer, is immune from that simple maxim, no matter how informed, educated and objective we consider ourselves to be. The only chance that any of us has to approach the truth is to expose ourselves to as many points of view as possible and with the singular intent of understanding, not arguing back or defending. We can’t be sure we’re right if we refuse to consider that we might be wrong.

All of this explains why we must never accept at face value what we hear from highly committed activists and advocates, conservative, liberal, progressive or otherwise. In fact, the most informed people that I have ever known are also the most calm and circumspect. They don’t use hyperbole or repeat stock phrases.

However, activists are not necessarily trying to deceive. It is simply that their commitment to their cause has become so intense and so one-sided that some of them become almost cult-like, all mouthing similar words and phrases. Talk with a committed Marxist, and you will likely hear the words “struggle” or “peoples” in the first few minutes. They become like that Upper East Side society matron who exclaimed, “How could George Bush have won the election? I don’t know anyone who voted for him!” Yes, I’m sure she didn’t. Inbreeding has never been a healthy thing for our minds or our species.

It is very difficult to bring overzealous people back from the edge and closer to the center. They believe that they already have the world figured out. While they are often outspoken advocates of “dialogue,” what they promote is not an open-minded attempt at mutual understanding, but rather an opportunity to bring the rest of us around to their point of view. We’re the ones who need to become enlightened, not them. That isn’t dialogue; it’s a reeducation camp.

To be fair, activists offer much that is admirable, and I have defended some of them as the “growing tips” in our society. To their credit, they are the people who have the courage of their convictions and who are willing to be on the receiving end of public scorn for being very public about their beliefs. As such they play a vital role in our democracy. They call attention to important issues and present us with perspectives that compel the rest of us to reexamine our long held and cherished beliefs. That is a growth opportunity for any society, just as long as we remember that everything that we are hearing has been processed through an ideological filter and is rarely reflective of the whole truth.

Joseph Filko has taught economics and American government, and lives in Williamsburg. He can be reached at jfilko1944@gmail.com.

One would think that Democrats had learned their lesson when former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid used the so-called “nuclear option” in 2013, by reducing the cloture threshold from 60 votes down to a simple majority. That new rule applied to confirmation votes for federal judges, but not for Supreme Court justices. Then during the Trump administration in 2017, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Republican majority used another nuclear option to remove the barrier for U.S. Supreme Court justices. They also refused to even consider former President Obama’s late term nomination of Merrick Garland, and the rest is history.

In response, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee turned confirmation hearings into media circuses, especially for Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. But prior to recent Senate behavior, right-leaning Chief Justice John Roberts’ confirmation vote was 78-22. Left-leaning Ruth Bader Ginsburg had been approved 96-3 in 1993, and likewise the liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor was approved 68-31 and liberal Justice Elena Kagan 63-37. But gone are the days of mutual respect and congeniality. Justice Neil Gorsuch was approved with only three Democratic votes. Kavanaugh received only one Democratic vote, and all 47 Democrats voted against Barrett. President Biden has had one opportunity to nominate a new justice, and that was Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who received Republican support from only Sens. Romney, Collins and Murkowski, all three of whom are known to be centrists.

The point to be remembered is that elections have consequences. When we cast a vote for president, we are also casting a vote for his or her power to make nominations to the federal judiciary. But rather than allow democracy to run its course, there are those who want to subvert the process by having the Congress pack the court for no other reason than to offset the impact of the current majority. That is nothing more than partisan politics run amok, no matter which party does it. Democratic Party Majority Leader Chuck Schumer stood outside the Supreme Court and said, “I want to tell you Gorsuch. I want to tell you Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.” That is the most appalling thing this writer has ever heard a congressional leader say to the court. If there have been others, they belong in the same hall of infamy.

Roberts responded correctly by saying, “Justices know that criticism comes with the territory, but threatening statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous.” Since then, the nation has witnessed noisy protestors for weeks on end outside the homes of some of the justices and one possible attempt at an assassination. Do we really want to live in a country where American courts allow outside agitators and protestors to influence their deliberations and decisions? The distance between that and mob rule is a short one.

Would the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 have been reached in the conclusive way it was (9-0) if there had been hordes of angry segregationists mobbing the Supreme Court and harassing justices in their own homes? Would Thurgood Marshall, who argued successfully for 14th Amendment equal protection in Brown, have been or felt safe whenever he left the building?

When obsession sets in, the madness of crowds takes over, which is exactly what we witnessed on Jan. 6, 2021, at the Capitol. Less seriously, but no less appalling, there were people pounding on the doors of the Supreme Court after the Kavanaugh confirmation, and during the hearings, noisy protestors came in and disrupted the proceedings repeatedly.

Justice Clarence Thomas is age 75 and Justice Samuel Alito is 73. Roberts and Sotomayor are both 69. It is possible that the next president will be making one or more nominations. Thereafter, neither side should seek to upend our Constitutional system of checks and balances by engaging in partisan court packing. To do so would turn the U.S. Supreme Court into a mere subordinate and a dependent vassal of any future U.S. Senate majority. When politicians like Schumer warn about “threats to democracy,” we should consider how often partisans become the very thing that they seek to destroy.

Joseph Filko has taught American government and economics, and lives in Williamsburg. He can be reached at jfilko1944@gmail.com.