Category: Commentary

We recently posted a couple more short videos on relevant and timely topics.  They include:

–The Way of the Viking

–The Comfort of Complexity

–Some Thoughts on Healthcare

All our videos can be found on our YouTube page here.  We recently put them into 9 playlists, which you can find here.

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That so many structures of a modern civilization have been destroyed by wildfires propelled and sustained by nature – and by human shortcomings – is a shameful embarrassment for the United States.

But the lesson to be learned from the human failures – failures of character and good judgment – are universal.  They can be applied in every country because they lie at the heart of bad governance.

In 2012, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson wrote an impressive and well-received book, Why Nations Fail, on the origins of power, prosperity and poverty.  In many ways, their theory of failure followed the recommendations of John Locke and Adam Smith to build institutions that embraces the ambitions, aspirations and well-being of individuals – politically and economically.

They credit good institutions with prosperity and bad institutions with poverty.  Good institutions bring about virtuous circles of growth and individual agency from individual to individual.  Bad institutions are elitist and extract rents from the economy and suppress growth and well-being.  They concluded that “Rich nations are rich largely because they managed to develop inclusive institutions …[under which] wealth is not concentrated in the hands of a small group that could then use its economic might to increase its political power disproportionately.”

In California, wealth and political power are concentrated in an elite – Hollywood and high-tech, for short – that failed at the state, county and local levels to provide for water reservoirs, to have fire hydrants that worked and which ignored warnings from the National Weather Service of the risk of wildfires flourishing with an assist from strong winds.  The budget for the fire department of Los Angeles was cut.  There was no professional management of chaparral and other undergrowth in the hills to the north and east of downtown Los Angeles.

It has been widely commented in the American media that this California elite had “its own priorities,” elevating the importance of an idealistic environmentalism, higher salaries for those who work for government (rent extraction from the public at large) and enabling dependency among the homeless and those ill-prepared to take care of themselves.

To the contrary, the Caux Round Table Principles for Government advocate:

1. The civic order shall serve all those who accept the responsibilities of citizenship.

Public power constitutes a civic order for the safety and common good of its members.  The civic order, as a moral order, protects and promotes the integrity, dignity and self-respect of its members in their capacity as citizens and therefore, avoid all measures, oppressive and other, whose tendency is to transform the citizen into a subject.  The state shall protect, give legitimacy to or restore all those principles and institutions which sustain the moral integrity, self-respect and civic identity of the individual citizen and which also serve to inhibit processes of civic estrangement, dissolution of the civic bond and civic disaggregation.  This effort by the civic order itself protects the citizen’s capacity to contribute to the well-being of the civic order.

4. Security of persons, individual liberty and ownership of property are the foundation for individual justice.

The civic order, through its instrumentalities, shall provide for the security of life, liberty and property for its citizens in order to insure domestic tranquility.

5. General welfare contemplates improving the well-being of individual citizens.

The state shall nurture and support all those social institutions most conducive to the free self-development and self-regard of the individual citizen.  Public authority shall seek to avoid or to ameliorate conditions of life and work which deprive the individual citizen of dignity and self-regard or which permit powerful citizens to exploit the weak.

The state has a custodial responsibility to manage and conserve the material and other resources that sustain the present and future well-being of the community.

All our principles, including the full list of our Principles for Government, can be found here.

Thus, in Shakespeare’s words, did English King Henry V challenge his soldiers to carry on against rival French defenders of Harfleur.

As many in business and finance know, success is not for all.  Failure and bankruptcy also mark the road forward for capitalism.  Creative destruction paves the way of progress and higher standards of living, said Joseph Schumpeter.  Clayton Christensen and the Harvard Business School wrote of the “innovators dilemma.”

Today, the once mighty company, creator of so much wealth and progress with its CPU chips to run computers, Intel is no longer just steaming along astride the waves of time and fortune.

The Wall Street Journal’s Christopher Mims reported on January 4-5, 2025:

“You may think you know how much Intel is struggling, but the reality is worse.

The once-mighty American innovation powerhouse is losing market share in multiple areas that are critical to its profitability …

One flashing warning sign: In the latest quarter reported by both companies, Intel’s perennial also-ran, AMD, actually eclipsed Intel’s revenue for chips that go into data centers.  This is a stunning reversal: In 2022, Intel’s data-center revenue was three times that of AMD.

… more and more of the chips that go into data centers are GPUs, short for graphics processing units and Intel has minuscule market share of these high-end chips.  GPUs are used for training and delivering AI.

By focusing on the all-important metric of performance per unit of energy pumped into their chips, AMD went from almost no market share in servers to its current ascendant position, says AMD Chief Technology Officer Mark Papermaster.  As data centers become ever more rapacious for energy, this emphasis on efficiency has become a key advantage for AMD. …

This situation looks likely to get worse and quickly.  Many of the companies spending the most on building out new data centers are switching to chips that have nothing to do with Intel’s proprietary architecture, known as x86 and are instead using a combination of a competing architecture from ARM and their own custom chip designs.”

Under the natural law of markets, what has no customers cannot be sold, no matter how nice, well-meaning and deserving the producer or the seller may be.  Markets are not charities.  As Adam Smith noticed, they match self-interest with self-interest.

But not every judgment about one’s self-interest is optimal.  People can be and often are short-sighted about what is best for them.  Some people can even be self-destructive or have no confidence in their agency to do good and right.

Thus, for me, finding the balance that makes a market transaction or capitalism, in general, moral, is a constant challenge for us all.

Will internet technology – produced and maintained by capitalist companies – be good for political discourse in America?

The Caux Round Table’s ethical principles for moral government rely on discourse for offsetting the worst in human self-promotion and denigration of others and empowering good reasoning and formation of balanced aggregation of opinion and getting us closer to a sustainable “truth.”

But a recent comment in the Wall Street Journal by Ms. Jamie Manning, CEO of Swann Street Media, a digital agency specializing in advocacy and political campaigns, points to very negative externalities associated with the most recent communicative campaigning techniques.

She enlightens us:

“The Trump campaign’s key strategists attribute their victory … to a finely tuned advertising strategy that used new techniques to target undecided voters with messages that the campaign knew would move the needle.  Specifically, the campaign found that “a disproportionate share of those undecided or swayable voters could be found on streaming services,” as a recent New York Times article noted.  Approximately half of up-for-grabs voters didn’t have cable and subscribed only to streaming platforms like Hulu, ESPN+, YouTube TV and Pluto.

That presented the Trump campaign with an unprecedented opportunity.  Most streaming platforms allow advertisers to choose exactly who sees their ads.  The campaign and allied super PACs chose wisely.  Operatives worked to “pair their polling data with consumer information and match it to the voter rolls in the seven swing states.  The end result was an actual list of 6.3 million individual voters.”

Modern analytics tools enable the Trump campaign and any other advertiser, whether a trade association looking to sway public opinion on a niche issue or a company hoping to boost sales, to assemble such lists with staggering precision.  By combining publicly available voter files with purchasable information from credit card companies, internet service providers and other data brokers, it’s possible to match voters with the unique “device IDs” of their laptops, desktops, smartphones and tablets.  From there, it’s possible to build accurate profiles based on purchasing, browsing and location histories.

The Trump campaign could push ads about its Make America Healthy Again agenda to a newly registered 20-year-old Hispanic male who frequents the gym, regularly listens to Mr. Rogan, streams UFC fights and buys vitamins at GNC.  Or the campaign could push ads featuring Mr. Trump’s and JD Vance’s pledges not to ban abortion – perhaps even featuring footage from their podcast appearances, where both men built trust with audiences by offering longer-form, nuanced takes – to reassure voters who were pro-choice, but favored Mr. Trump’s immigration or economic policies. …

Political campaigns at every level will increasingly pay for micro-targeted digital ads to reach the voters they need with the exact messages those voters find most compelling. …

A new day is dawning for political campaigns, issue-advocacy groups and Fortune 1000 companies looking to reach the audiences that matter most.  Precision targeting is the future.  The Trump campaign just got there first.”

With such targeted one-way communications, is there any discourse taking place?

A few days ago, I sent to our network some personal thoughts on our late former President Jimmy Carter.  A few days before Christmas, I received from a colleague in Washington, D.C., who follows what is privately shared among Chinese in China thanks to his friendship with Chinese Americans, a letter asking Xi Jinping to resign.

The letter is a classic in the neo-Confucian tradition, especially the writings of Mencius on the people’s right to overthrow an evil king.  As the ancient Book of History records, the founder of the Zhou Dynasty proclaimed that “Heaven sees as the people see; Heaven hears as the people hear.”

In the letter, included below, the writer, a person of status and familiar with Chinese classical values and political philosophy, directs attention to Xi’s failings in moral character and personal leadership.  In Confucian terms, Xi lacks virtue – Te.

If the letter’s representations about Xi’s leadership are correct, he is not living up to the Caux Round Table’s ethical principles for moral government.

And he is no Jimmy Carter either.

Most publicly humiliating to Xi is, at the end of the long letter, the comparison of his reign with that of the Dowager Empress Cixi, who has been widely denigrated and very emotionally despised for leading the Qing Dynasty into collapse in the great humiliation of China before the West.  For example, she spent funds on the summer palace and not on the navy.

The letter reads as follows in English translation:

Since taking on leadership roles in the party, government and military, Comrade Xi Jinping has exhibited numerous serious problems and grave shortcomings, which have caused significant harm to the country, its people and the entire party:

1. In managing the nation and economy, he has adopted extremely left-leaning practices, including overly emphasizing public ownership, promoting state advancement and private retreat, which have undermined market fairness, suppressed private enterprises, including forcing companies like Tencent and Alibaba to submit under investigations, fines and other forms of suppression and excessively intervening in the economy, causing everyone to feel constrained and lacking investment enthusiasm, leading to a significant decline in the vitality of the national economy.
2. Incompetent in governance.  Without thoroughly investigating and analyzing problems, rushing for quick results, making numerous misguided decisions that have devastated industries; sectors like real estate, education, finance and online platforms have all suffered from his harsh, irrational and excessive interventions that violate market principles, leading to severe impacts, massive losses or even bankruptcy, with industries withering rapidly.
3. Recklessly causing trouble and wasting resources.  Ignoring the people’s hardship while pursuing grandiose projects, investing unlimitedly in infrastructure, including inefficiently pouring huge sums into projects like the Xiong’an New Area and spending lavishly on the Belt and Road Initiative projects worldwide.
4. Violating the principles of separation between party and government and between politics and business.  Overemphasizing party leadership, demanding party control over everything with absolute decision-making power, including administrative affairs of the government and affairs of enterprises and institutions, even forcibly requiring private businesses to establish party organizations under party control.
5. Destroying the term limits for leadership.  Ignoring the lessons learned from painful historical experiences that led to the establishment of term limits, he forcibly amended the constitution to allow himself indefinite terms.  This has regressed the national system, making power unchecked by term limits, leading the country into a dangerous situation prone to authoritarianism and causing both domestic and international loss of confidence in our government’s system, isolating and alienating China from the world, losing opportunities for global integration and development.
6. Undermining the principle of democratic centralism, engaging in personal authoritarian dictatorship.  Overemphasizing power centralization and core authoritarian leadership, severely weakening democratic decision-making, not adhering to the principle that the minority should submit to the majority, individuals to the organization, by intimidating subordinates to monopolize all power, not tolerating or allowing any constraints, reaching the pinnacle of authoritarianism, thereby implementing many wrong personal decisions. At present, the whole country and party are essentially under his one-man rule, with other Standing Committee members being mere decorations, monopolizing media coverage, rarely allowing other members visibility, even turning collegial relationships into a monarch-subject dynamic.
7. Promoting personal cult.  Ignoring the great disasters personal cults have brought to the party and the country, directing subordinates to sing his praises, pretending to understand and guide various affairs, demanding that all levels adhere to his words as golden rules and spend a lot of time studying them and allowing many ghostwriters to publish books under his name for widespread distribution, both domestically and internationally.
8. Disrupting political order and norms.  Seizing power, appointing loyalists and sycophants, forming cliques, repeatedly undermining political order and norms, causing a significant regression in China’s nascent political civilization.
9. Seriously damaging unity within and outside the party and undermining united front work.  Instead of uniting more people, he often suppresses others, making enemies everywhere.
10. Attempting to achieve comprehensive control over everyone.  To act more freely, he tries to revive the governance model from the Cultural Revolution to control people economically and administratively, including promoting the Fengqiao Experience, mass movements, public ownership, communal canteens, collective economy, supply and marketing cooperatives and relocating enterprises for war preparation.  He uses high-tech surveillance like cameras and communication apps with big data and AI to monitor everyone’s lives, including senior officials and retired leaders.  He has also introduced draconian laws like the National Security Law, Anti-Espionage Law, Secrecy Law and Internet Regulation Law to control and suppress the populace.
11. Incompetence and errors in controlling the Covid-19 outbreak have led to numerous deaths and enormous economic losses.  Initial concealment led to loss of control, followed by excessive quarantine causing many infections and deaths, then excessive personnel isolation and mass nucleic acid testing consumed vast resources, locking down people and making life unbearable and finally, sudden lifting of restrictions leading to widespread infection and many deaths.
12. In diplomacy, lacking integrity, morality and rule of law.  Supporting aggressors, terrorists and tyrannical regimes worldwide, causing China’s isolation and sanctions, leading countries to reduce purchases of Chinese products, increase tariffs and foreign investments and companies to withdraw, severely impacting national economic development and destroying many people’s livelihoods.
13. Violating the strategy of keeping a low profile, souring relations with many countries, damaging China’s favorable international development environment.  Pursuing an aggressive anti-Western line, not resolving conflicts, seeking common ground while shelving differences or coexisting peacefully with Western countries, instead promoting “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy emphasizing struggle, provoking conflicts, making enemies with many countries and engaging in trade wars with the U.S., aiming for global dominance and control, severely violating the strategy of lying low and making friends with all, putting China in the worst, most disadvantageous development situation.
14. Selling out the country for personal glory.  To please other nations, he often generously offers financial aid, spending lavishly during visits and receptions, even through profit concessions, ceding territory and appeasing through agreements, transferring China’s wealth and land to other countries.
15. Destroying Hong Kong’s democracy, freedom and rule of law, causing Hong Kong to lose its prosperity, with industries and population fleeing; his aggressive approach to reunify Taiwan through threats has alienated the people of Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, causing immeasurable damage to national integration and unity.  The harsh anti-independence laws he promoted have scared away many Taiwanese businesses and talents from the mainland.
16. In social management, emphasizing stability maintenance over addressing and resolving issues.  Instead of solving problems and coordinating contradictions, he emphasizes forceful stability, resulting in high costs and poor outcomes.
17. Lacking empathy, not understanding or addressing public concerns and showing no humanity.  Frequently issuing policies disconnected from reality and overly harsh, such as destroying people’s properties and homes under the guise of protecting mountains, waters and farmland, forcibly evicting low-end populations for the safety of Beijing or claiming to clear social residues for a new society, arbitrarily locking down people under the pretext of epidemic control, often leading to public distress and widespread complaints.  He insists on rigid, one-size-fits-all policy enforcement, ignoring the complex local situations and historical reasons.
18. Driven by a thirst for power.  Controlling everything, establishing numerous “groups” above government agencies, intervening in affairs at will.  Amending the constitution for indefinite terms and using the epidemic as an excuse for long-term, strict lockdowns to prevent opposition to his re-election.
19. Arbitrary and intolerant of dissent.  Not good at listening to or considering others’ opinions, ignoring public sentiment, not allowing criticism or commentary, labeling well-meaning suggestions as “irresponsible remarks” and punishing them harshly.  Creating a one-man show, not tolerating advice, punishing advisors, prohibiting opposition, blocking criticism, censoring the internet, restricting freedom of speech, suppressing bloggers and active netizens, arresting human rights lawyers and dissidents, making the whole society silent, with all channels of expression cut off, leading to poor decision-making, unaddressed issues accumulating and worsening governance in all aspects.
20. Vain, stubborn and never admitting mistakes, even when facing a wall.  Believing himself to be the greatest contributor to the nation, unmatched in capability and a once-in-a-millennium emperor.
21. Narrow-minded, cruel, often pushing people to despair or death over minor disagreements, using espionage, anti-corruption or tax audits to widely attack opponents, making everyone feel insecure.
22. Lacking steadiness, with a volatile temper.  Decisions often made without careful consideration of consequences, frequently made in anger, leading to irrational decisions.
23. Lacking the spirit of the rule of law.  Substituting party for government, bypassing legal procedures in decision-making, acting unilaterally, enforcing special treatments, often punishing companies and dissenters based on personal whims, causing Fujikura, Alibaba and NVIDIA to suffer from his displeasure, leading to reduced or withdrawn investments in China.  Entrepreneur Sun Dawu was arrested for criticizing the suppression of human rights lawyers, while netizens like Niu Tengyu were heavily sentenced for sharing Xi’s and his family’s ID information.  Also, establishing the Tax Police Combat Center, aiming to imitate the land redistribution of past eras for tax collection through combat-like operations.
24. Psychologically twisted, with severe envy of the wealthy.  Under the guise of common prosperity, attacking the wealthy, stripping assets, causing many elites and wealthy individuals to emigrate with significant capital, leading to a drain on national wealth and undermining the economy.
25. Unscrupulous in methods, including purges, threats, torture and assassinations for power struggles, allegedly orchestrating events like the Tianjin explosion and multiple fires in Shanghai for political battles.
26. Habitually fabricating and lying constantly.  Often covering up problems, demanding all levels to beautify the situation and pretend peace, even when issues are severe.
27. Stubbornly rejecting new ideas, acting against democracy.  Denying and firmly rejecting political reform, going against the global democratic tide (including the “Seven Don’ts,” which prohibit discussing universal values, civil society, press freedom, civil rights, historical errors of the party, the privileged class and press freedom).
28. Completely disregarding the interests of the country and its people, prioritizing personal power security (which he calls “political security”).  Sacrificing national interests and affecting people’s livelihood for his personal power and historical legacy.  Showing no regard for the lives and property of the populace, casually trampling them, feeling no compassion as people commit suicide or are violently suppressed, believing these are normal or acceptable outcomes.  Such a person is clearly unfit to lead the party, government and military.

Under his misguided policies, China’s economy has significantly declined and stagnated, industries have withered, the treasury is empty, the country faces internal and external challenges, both officials and civilians suffer, with domestic and foreign capital completely disillusioned and losing all hope for the future, leading to a downturn in investment and consumption, further economic depression.  Countless people have lost their means of livelihood, becoming refugees, with cries of despair and complaints echoing across the land, businesses collapsing, people jobless and desperate, some even driven to suicide or violent acts against society out of frustration.

He is entirely incompetent, causing catastrophic impacts in politics, economy, diplomacy and military, leading to severe socio-economic, social, political and Taiwan Strait crisis.  China’s economy is irreversibly deteriorating, with public hardship, the national finance on the brink of bankruptcy, public resentment boiling, officials becoming passive and a full-blown societal crisis imminent.

He is as backward as Wang Mang, as grandiose as Yang Guang, as obstinate as Chongzhen, as ignorant and arrogant as Xianfeng and as disastrous as Cixi, unfit to continue as the leader of the nation.

He is the root of China’s current chaos and with every day he remains in power, the country and its people suffer more; if allowed to continue, China will descend into an irredeemable abyss.  He must be removed from office as soon as possible.

Almost everyone in the nation, from officials to civilians, would rejoice in his downfall, with the military and police ready to turn against him.  We hereby demand his immediate resignation from all leadership roles and to apologize to the nation.

We also demand that the country uses this opportunity to abandon the current system prone to autocracy, establishing a new democratic republic society where everyone can enjoy a free and open life.

It was early 1976, as I remember.  As a young lawyer working for a Wall Street law firm, where Cyrus Vance – later to be President Carter’s Secretary of State – was a senior partner, on a whim, I went to a reception to learn about a Jimmy Carter from Georgia who was running for the Democratic Party’s nomination for the Presidency.

Carter was supposed to introduce himself to us over a speaker phone, but the connection didn’t work, so his campaign representatives delivered a different “vibe,” as we say these days.   America had just lost its first war, in defense of the nationalists in South Vietnam.  Though nobody wanted to talk about defeat, many Americans knew something had gone very wrong and were uneasy in their consciences.

Somehow, Carter spoke to that unease with reassurance.  People could be good.  There could be reconciliation.  There could be trust in one another.  He won election as President of the United States.

Those sentiments and those ideals are very much a part of the moral foundation that the Caux Round Table advocates for moral capitalism, moral government and moral society.

At the beginning of the day and at the end of the day, it is character and conscience that make the difference for good.  Character, of course, includes both ethical principles and practical wisdom. One without the other can easily become either evil or useless.

A mark of Jimmy Carter’s character was his July 15, 1979, speech to the American people on living up to high expectations of goodwill and trustworthy citizenship.  That speech, derided as his malaise speech, was not esteemed by our movers and shakers, to our great loss as a nation.

Carter forthrightly said:

“You’ve heard more and more about what the government thinks or what the government should be doing and less and less about our nation’s hopes, our dreams and our vision of the future. …

Why have we not been able to get together as a nation to resolve our serious energy problem?

It’s clear that the true problems of our nation are much deeper – deeper than gasoline lines or energy shortages, deeper even than inflation or recession.  And I realize more than ever that as president, I need your help.  So, I decided to reach out and listen to the voices of America.”

He invited many to meet with him at Camp David in the hilly Catoctin mountains.  After listening, Carter summarized what he had heard: “Mr. President, we are confronted with a moral and a spiritual crisis.”

He continued in his speech:

“The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways.  It is a crisis of confidence.  It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will.  We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.

The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America. …

But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning.  We’ve learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.

The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us.  For the first time in the history of our country, a majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years.  Two-thirds of our people do not even vote.  The productivity of American workers is actually dropping and the willingness of Americans to save for the future has fallen below that of all other people in the Western world.

As you know, there is a growing disrespect for government and for churches and for schools, the news media and other institutions.  This is not a message of happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and it is a warning. …

First of all, we must face the truth and then we can change our course.  We simply must have faith in each other, faith in our ability to govern ourselves and faith in the future of this nation. Restoring that faith and that confidence to America is now the most important task we face.  It is a true challenge of this generation of Americans. …

We are at a turning point in our history.  There are two paths to choose.  One is a path I’ve warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest.  Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others.  That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure.

All the traditions of our past, all the lessons of our heritage, all the promises of our future point to another path, the path of common purpose and the restoration of American values.  That path leads to true freedom for our nation and ourselves.”

Americans did not listen to Jimmy Carter.  Against his advice, they chose the path of division and not of common purpose.

In our recent presidential election, voters split roughly 50/50 between two bitter and incorrigible rivals – the Democrats and Donald Trump.

As history has shown again and again, a “house divided cannot stand.”

“He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind.” – Proverbs 11:29

“They sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.  The stalk has no head; it will produce no flour.” – Hosea 8:7

Jimmy Carter understood that Biblical wisdom.

My gratitude to Jimmy Carter is for his leadership in providing safe haven in the U.S. for the victims of communism in South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.  In 1978, I was part of a small team – the Citizens Commission for Indochinese Refugees – that visited refugee camps in Thailand and returned to Washington asking the Carter Administration and Congress for a new law giving new homes and new lives to those refugees.

When in the camp of Khmer refugees in Chanthaburi, Thailand – some of the very few Khmer who had escaped the Khmer Rouge – more than one refugee told me of the rule of the Khmer Rouge cadres: “If you live, we gain nothing.  If you die, we lose nothing.  So, why not kill you today?”

I asked a Buddhist monk in the camp about the monks in Cambodia. He replied: “All dead.”  I asked about the Buddhist scriptures. He replied: “All burned.”  I asked about the temples.  He replied: “Those not used for schools are destroyed.”

President Carter had added “human rights” to his foreign policy agenda.  Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and Assistant Secretary for Human Rights Patricia Derian supported us, as did Senator Ted Kennedy, responsible for immigration in the Senate.

The 1980 Refugee Act was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Carter.

Moral government at work, I would say.

Confucius advised: “Hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles.” (The Analects, Bk 1, 8)

When thinking of Jimmy Carter and of ourselves, whoever we may be and wherever we may live, we can acknowledge the truth spoken by Confucius so many centuries ago: “See what a man does.  Mark his motives.  Examine in what things he rests.  How can a man conceal his character?  How can a man conceal his character?” (The Analects, Bk2, 10)

We recently posted a few more short videos on relevant and timely topics.  They include:

–Three Thoughts on the 2024 U.S. Election

–Social Media – Who’s Responsible?

–Quality Government and Quality Data

–Covenants as a Modern Model for Peace

All our videos can be found on our YouTube page here.  We recently put them into 9 playlists, which you can find here.

If you aren’t following us on Twitter or haven’t liked us on Facebook, please do so.  We update both platforms frequently.

An American federal judge in Texas has just ruled that racist thinking cannot supersede professional best practices where the safety of airline passengers is at stake.

As I wrote several years ago when the virtue-signaling of the woke, diversity, equity and inclusion movement spread like a viral pathogen across American bureaucracies – public and private – invidious racism has no place in a moral capitalism.

We can each be as proud as we want to be of our genetic heritage and the cultures which have nourished our families over generations, but moral standards demand something more than application of genetic codes for appearance and reproductive capacities or cultural traditions when we pass judgment on others.

The issue before the judge was who Boeing may select as a monitor of its safety practices.  The case involved remediation of Boeing’s business model after the crashes of two 737 MAX aircraft.

In settling its case against Boeing for negligence in causing 346 passenger deaths, the federal government insisted on an agreement that Boeing would use standards of diversity and inclusion when choosing an independent monitor of its production of aircraft.

Judge Reed O’Connor ruled that the government’s use of the words “diversity” and “inclusion” did not rule out racism and so opened the door to racist criteria in evaluating candidates for supervising the quality of the safety protections used in building airplanes and built into each aircraft brought to market.

I suppose the moral norm of justice is not to use racism to screen out qualified candidates and also not to use racism inappropriately to screen in qualified candidates.  That seems to be the basis for Judge O’Connor’s decision, which is in keeping with the Supreme Court’s refusal to legitimate racism in allocating acceptances for college admissions.

You may read Judge O’Connor’s opinion here.

On the day after the American Thanksgiving holiday, I spent a few hours walking about a pre-capitalist community.  It was the Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth, Massachusetts, on the coast south of Boston.  The plantation is a recreation of the hamlet erected by the Pilgrims in 1620 after their landing on the coast of what was to become the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

It is a tourist attraction, with some 10 thatched roofed houses built with historical accuracy and staffed with guides dressed in 17^th century style clothing and speaking a bit awkwardly in old English accents to the delight of young children and the amusement of adults.

After walking into three or so of the houses with gardens behind on a cold day, I thought of how did the Pilgrims grow enough vegetables to get themselves through the winter of 1620/1621?  Then, I thought of how many kegs of nails and barrels of flour they had brought over in the small Mayflower sailing ship?  Enough for a winter?  A year?  Two years?

They had no smithy then and so how could they have made or repaired iron tools – saws, hoes, etc.  Could their saws cut down enough trees for boards and firewood?  What if a saw broke?

Suddenly, every aspect of their lives appeared to have been arduous.  Cooking in a dark room. Walls that could not keep out the winter cold.  Did they bring enough woven cloth from which to make new shirts, dresses, pants and warm coats?

They had no shopping mall, no stores, no markets and no factories to provide wage employment.  The only money they had, most likely, was the coin they had brought with them.

I then thought of Adam Smith and his 1776 description of early capitalism in Wealth of Nations.  The Pilgrim lifestyle and its rigors were far inferior in quality of life than the realities he was describing.

That first winter perhaps half the new arrivals died.  Of course, their settlement had no doctors, no infirmaries, no antibiotics, no tubs for soaking baths, no showers, no flush toilets, maybe not much soap for washing.

I decided that I would not want to live that life.  If I were to choose between pre-capitalism and capitalism, I would take the latter in a heartbeat.

Adam Smith was wise: specialization of function, division of labor, the factory system, application of science in the invention of machinery, the manufacture of products, commodities, inventing property rights, holding markets, the creation of wealth, all made for improvements in the human condition.

Here is a chart that summarizes, in graphic form, the human good of capitalism:

Why are we today so concerned about social justice and economic inequality?  Is it not because those who live in poverty today still have lives more likely to be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short?”  Is not the quality of life a moral good to be sought and appreciated?  And therefore, from an equity perspective, we show concern for the quality of every life.

This appreciation of living with plenty, with opportunities to earn and to learn, with good health, with the manifold advantages of modernity, was especially voiced by Presidents Washinton and Lincoln in their proclamations asking Americans to set aside a day in the month of November to give thanks and not take their lives for granted or as an indulgence in undeserved privilege.

Washington wrote:

“Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26^th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be – That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks – for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation – for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war – for the great degree of tranquility, union and plenty, which we have since enjoyed – for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness and particularly the national One now lately instituted – for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.”

Abraham Lincoln wrote:

“The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies.  To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and even soften the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God…”

“Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore.  Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battlefield and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.  No human counsel hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things.  They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.  It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people.”

The December issue of The Atlantic magazine brings all of us a timely and important protest over mismanagement of the American elite.

David Brooks’ article is titled “How the Ivy League Broke America.”

Using institutions of higher education to recruit and condition future members of national elites is foundational to modernity.

Napoleon created the Grande Ecoles in France to elevate the French to the heights of Enlightenment reason and excellence.  Hegel and Humboldt did the same in Germany.  The German model of the university came to the U.S. after our Civil War, starting with Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Previously, Oxford and Cambridge had executed the same function of providing specialized social capital creation for Great Britain.

Countries around the world now very much want to send their children to the U.S. for higher education.

But what if the American system of higher education has fallen down on the job?  What if its graduates cannot and do not serve the American people well as adult professionals?

This is the question Brooks puts forward in his essay.  He insists that there has been a disgraceful failure in American higher education, failings which need to be stopped and replaced with a better system.

What Brooks writes is relevant to every country.  Higher education opens the gates of a nation’s capacity to build a moral society, moral capitalism and moral government.

You may read my shortened version of his essay here.