Holy Cross’s New President: Causes for Hope and Concern

On February 10, the Holy Cross Board of Trustees announced Vincent D. Rougeau as the College’s new president. Currently dean of Boston College Law School since 2011, he previously served at Notre Dame Law School as a tenured professor and later an associate dean. Rougeau writes frequently on topics ranging from legal education to Catholic social thought, and currently serves as a senior fellow at the London-based Centre for Theology and Community, where his research focuses on community organizing, immigration, and citizenship. Beyond his impressive resume, he will have the notable distinction of being Holy Cross’s first lay and black president.

At Holy Cross, Rougeau will offer “strategic vision, deep experience as a faculty member and administrator, and commitment to liberal arts education,” said Board Chairman Richard Patterson ‘80 in a statement. “Both his scholarship and leadership demonstrate his profound dedication to Catholic social teaching and educating students towards seeking justice and making a meaningful difference in our world.” The question all Holy Cross students, faculty, and alumni surely have is what exactly the new president’s strategic vision and leadership will look like in practice. While much will remain unknown until he takes office in July, Rougeau’s extensive writings and administrative record at two of America’s top law schools provide useful, if incomplete, insights into what can be expected of the new president’s tenure at Holy Cross.

From a symbolic standpoint, Rougeau represents a marked departure from the College’s venerable and (until now) unbroken tradition of having Jesuit priests as presidents. Many in the Holy Cross community, including here at The Fenwick Review, hoped this tradition would continue after Father Boroughs’ retirement in June. However, given the rapidly declining number of Jesuits in the United States in recent decades, it is fair to say the day Holy Cross selected a lay president was probably inevitable. Beyond the practical difficulty of finding a stellar candidate among a shrinking pool of Jesuits, the Holy Cross student body unfortunately proved not to be incredibly invested in the idea, with only slightly more than half saying they would prefer the next president be a Jesuit in a survey taken by the presidential search committee.

All the more important, then, if the new president is to be a layperson, that they should exhibit a deep commitment to the College’s Catholic, Jesuit identity and tradition. Here, there are reasons to be hopeful. Rougeau, as he noted in his virtual introduction via livestream on February 11, comes from a deeply Catholic family with roots in the Creole community of southern Louisiana. His writing on issues facing American Catholics today, particularly in the realm of Catholic social teaching, is certainly admirable. Having a president who, at the very least, is engaged with Catholic teachings and practice is something to be grateful for.

That being said, there are also more than a few causes for concern. On this matter, it is important first to consider the present state of the College’s religious identity and its recent trajectory. Faith and spirituality are undoubtedly alive and well at Holy Cross, as evidenced by a number of active faith-based student organizations, including Students for Life, Pax Christi, Active Bible Study, and the Society of Saints Peter and Paul. The College’s student body is predominantly Catholic, and school Masses are fairly well attended.

In contrast, the Holy Cross administration’s commitment to sustaining the College’s Catholic tradition is questionable at best. At worst, it is nonexistent — as exemplified by the 2013 hiring of religious studies professor Tat-Siong Benny Liew, whose controversial scholarship was brought to light in a 2018 article by this publication. Liew is a scholar best known for his article “Queering Closets and Perverting Desires,” which described Jesus as a “drag king” who imagined His crucifixion through the lens of a “masochistic,” incestual relationship with God the Father. Such ideas would be almost laughable if they weren’t so obscene, and their consequences so pernicious — this professor was (and still is, as of Spring 2021) responsible for teaching the College’s primary introductory course on the New Testament.

Professor Liew’s appointment gave rise to a petition signed by more than 14,000 calling for his removal, and earned Holy Cross the ire of Bishop Robert McManus of the Diocese of Worcester. Bishop McManus stated at the time that he was “deeply troubled” with Professor Liew’s “highly offensive and blasphemous” views, and criticized President Boroughs’ decision to retain Liew on faculty in the name of “academic freedom.” Bishop McManus rightly noted that Catholic universities, as made clear by Pope John Paul II in Ex Corde Ecclesiae, have a duty to teach in accordance with the Church’s beliefs and intellectual tradition, and to uphold their Catholic mission and identity in “all aspects of their intellectual endeavors.” Academic freedom at Catholic colleges, he added, abides by certain limits, especially in the areas of theological education.

Challenges to the College’s religious identity do not always come in such glaring forms as the Professor Liew controversy. Smaller, everyday decisions by the administration, which may occur behind closed doors and pass with little notice, are less blatant but can be similarly pernicious if allowed to accumulate over time. By the same token, equally important to what the administration does is what it neglects to do. A case in point is Father Boroughs’ silence on the issue of abortion, despite countless statements and emails on a myriad of other recent topics, including the 2020 presidential election, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the January 6 Capitol riot. In a statement last May, Father Boroughs rightly asked the Holy Cross community to “pray for an end to the sin of racism.” But on the issue of abortion, which takes over 800,000 innocent lives in the U.S. each year, has featured prominently in the news media, and which Pope Francis describes as a “grave sin”… silence.

Evidently, the administration’s allegiance to Catholic principles extends only insofar as they are applicable to the progressive social justice causes they really care about. But if the College’s religious identity is to be abandoned, and a leftist political ideology adopted instead, the least the administration could do is ensure a tolerant atmosphere for those with different views. Unfortunately, even this appears to be too much to ask.

Two years ago, when Bishop Robert McManus visited Holy Cross for a healthcare conference to deliver an address on the Church’s moral understanding of the issue of transgenderism, his talk was blasted as “hurtful and offensive” by two of the College’s top deans. What about the president? Defending the right of a Catholic bishop to affirm Catholic teaching on the campus of a Catholic college should have been a no-brainer. But Father Boroughs demurred from making a public statement on the issue, implicitly legitimizing the deans’ unwarranted criticisms. But then again, Father Boroughs allowed the “Digital Transgender Archive” to set up shop down the hall from his office a few years ago with no complaints, so maybe this shouldn’t be a surprise. No wonder Bishop McManus says he’s “very concerned” with the present state of Holy Cross’s Catholic identity.

Unfortunately, it is not just the College’s religious identity that is in jeopardy, but also the freedom of expression of students whose views differ from the prevailing progressive ideology on campus. In 2019, when The Fenwick Review invited conservative author Heather Mac Donald to speak on campus, students from the Black Student Union and Student Government Association teamed up in an attempt to silence her voice. Showing up early, they took the majority of seats in the venue (thus ensuring many who legitimately wished to hear the speaker were unable to) and, when the event began, shouted Mac Donald down with chants of “My oppression is not a delusion!” and “You are not welcome!”

More concerning than some Holy Cross students’ desire to silence opposing views was the administration’s complete lack of concern. As National Review vice president Jack Fowler (a Holy Cross alumnus) described it at the time, “School officials seemed unperturbed by the display, with terms like ‘academic freedom’ and ‘free speech’ and ‘chilling effect’ nowhere to be found in the official comments.” From an administration so eager to cite “academic freedom” in defending the hiring of an arguably heretical theology professor, when it came to the Heather Mac Donald debacle… crickets. But, as Fowler put it, “Nothing much seems to perturb Holy Cross’s administration, as long as things traditional go by the wayside, or are upended.”

Would there be a more appropriate response from the Holy Cross administration if an incident like these were to occur in the future, under a President Rougeau? The jury is still out, but Rougeau’s tenure at Boston College doesn't give much cause for hope. In addition to his post at the helm of BC Law, Rougeau served as the inaugural director of BC’s Forum on Racial Justice in America. In an America magazine piece about the forum, Rougeau wrote, “If we are committed to [the core values of Boston College] we must, as the scholar Ibram X. Kendi has noted throughout his work, choose to be ‘antiracist.’” As many on both the right and left have pointed out — including here at The Fenwick Review — today’s “antiracism” of the Kendi variety couldn’t be farther from that of the civil rights era, and its ideas range from kooky and laughable to Orwellian and downright racist. It is a noxious, radical, and unequivocally illiberal ideology that, as education scholar Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute has written, has no place in any American educational institution, much less a liberal arts college like Holy Cross. 

The BC Forum on Racial Justice in America’s website touts itself as a “catalyst for bridging differences, promoting reconciliation, and encouraging new perspectives.” This is an admirable mission. But if the forum’s discourse is centered on the work of Ibram X. Kendi and other radical ideologues, there is surely little reconciliation occurring, or differences being bridged. The Holy Cross administration has itself recently become enamored with “antiracist” ideology. Under our new president, there is reason to be concerned that it, and other divisive political causes, will become even more entrenched, at the continued peril of the College’s religious heritage and culture of free expression.

To be clear, Rougeau has every right to express his views as a citizen, scholar, and writer. And his engagement with the pressing issues of today, both within our Church and society as a whole, is undoubtedly commendable. But serving as president of a Catholic liberal arts college comes with a unique set of responsibilities. Rougeau the citizen may, to his heart’s desire, champion whatever political cause he wishes. Rougeau the scholar and writer may argue forcefully in favor of a progressive interpretation of Catholic social teaching or US race relations. Rougeau the president of Holy Cross may still do these things, but must also balance his personal social and political views with a sense of respect for the College’s religious tradition and liberal arts environment.

Upon being named the College’s next president, Rougeau said he admired Holy Cross for its “unique place as our nation’s only Jesuit, Catholic liberal arts college.” As recent years have made abundantly clear, this “unique place” is in jeopardy due the administration’s consistent unwillingness to defend the very qualities that define the College as Jesuit, Catholic, and liberal. Rougeau also rightly added in his first statement that “Our current moment in history cries out for the mission-driven education that Holy Cross provides.” The question now is… which mission will it be? A progressive political agenda grounded in polarizing ideology? Or the mission of the College as it has been traditionally understood — a mission grounded in Catholic faith and the Jesuit intellectual tradition, and dedicated to the pursuit of truth in an environment of free expression, open discussion, and civility? Time will soon tell.

Let’s end on a hopeful note. As many questions and concerns as this article has raised, it is important we keep an open mind and offer our new president the utmost respect and goodwill as we welcome him into the Holy Cross community. Let’s all pray for him in his new role — his success will be the College’s, and we all want that.

Jargon-Free Economics: Why a Higher Minimum Wage Means Lower Standards of Living

I recently found myself surprised by the level of disagreement I have encountered among self-identified Republicans concerning the minimum wage.  Though the right side of the aisle is undoubtedly intellectually diverse, I thought they would surely agree that the federal minimum wage should not be increased by the U.S. government.  After all, the U.S. market economy’s track record has consisted historically of ensuring every household has a TV and dryer, and that multiple coronavirus vaccines are distributed within months of the virus’s emergence.  The U.S. government’s economic track record consists of — well — ensuring social security goes bankrupt and amassing $27 trillion in debt and counting.  Still, the popularity of a federally-mandated minimum wage has endured.  In my experience, this support is founded on a widespread ignorance of the principle of market incentives which have fueled and continue to fuel American prosperity.  Unfortunately, economic jargon alienates many individuals from looking further into topics such as the minimum wage.  In this article I hope to provide some clarity to these issues through simpler explanations of market behavior.

It is easy to understand why raising the minimum wage is a popular idea — everyone wants to make more money, and no one wants to see masses of people on the streets because their wage is insufficient.  With a $15 minimum wage (the number proposed by the Biden administration), everyone with a full-time job would make $600 a week!  It seems commonsense, then, that we raise the wage.  If people can make more money with one signature on a bill, why not?  This philosophy begs the question as to why the United States did not undertake such action decades ago.  Why hold higher salaries back from a segment of the American public if you do not have to?  Is it simply to enrich big bad Bezos, lobbyists, or other wealthy individuals so often reviled by the American public for supposedly hoarding wealth at the worker’s expense?  I would respond to someone advocating an increased minimum wage with the predictable question, why don’t we pursue legislation mandating a $20 minimum wage, or $50, or even $100?  If financial success for many Americans is just a signature away, why not make the minimum wage as high as possible?  Presumably, the answer would make itself evident to the minimum wage advocate at this point.  Doing so would destroy the economy, because most businesses simply cannot afford to pay employees such wages while remaining both profitable and efficient. 

Even a $15 minimum wage would have a massive ripple effect on the American economy.  Take McDonald’s and all companies like McDonald’s, which are likely to pay at least a small portion of employees minimum wage.  If the federal government enforced legislation mandating each of these businesses pay their low-level employees $15, considerably higher than the market value of their work, mass unemployment inevitably would result.  McDonald’s will simply install electric kiosks in their dining rooms in favor of cashiers, as the one-time cost of that installation would become far cheaper than consistently paying a team member more money than they bring into the company on an hourly basis.  The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 1.4 million jobs would be lost if Biden’s $15 minimum wage idea becomes federal policy — mostly underprivileged, unskilled workers.  Nor will these team members be able to easily find another job which requires their skillset, as most jobs for which they are qualified will disappear from the market.  Even if a worker is fortunate enough to keep his/her job, the company must make up for lost profit elsewhere.  This may come in the form of reduced hours for workers, increased prices for consumers, or a myriad of other possibilities.

Here begins the domino effect.  As unemployment rises in the United States following the minimum wage legislation, more citizens become reliant on welfare programs in order to survive.  As the welfare state grows, the government will look to extract the necessary funds to support such programs from the pockets of Americans in the form of taxes.  Americans as a whole, then, are left with less buying power than before, thus resulting in a less-stimulated, stagnant economy.  Businesses, suffering from the decrease in buying power per household in the United States, will see decreased profit or even net losses, thus laying off workers and beginning the vicious cycle again.  Matters only worsen once the government decides printing money is the answer to a stagnant economy. Such action would decrease the value of everyone’s dollar and increase the prices of consumer goods, which would gradually become unaffordable for many Americans due to inflation.

Hopefully it is clear by now why a high minimum wage does not work economically.  One persistent argument I have encountered at this point is the fact that a minimum wage may still have merit, as there is such great wealth inequality in the United States.  It is only moral for a wealthy business owner to pay a high wage to his/her hardworking employees — legislation just ensures this happens.  After all, once businesses amass a certain level of profit, there is no incentive for them to pay or treat workers well.  Firstly, this argument ignores the fact that most business owners are not Jeff Bezos, and that minimum wage will, in fact, hit “Main Street” businesses who already operate on tiny profit margins considerably harder than it will hit large businesses who have greater resources at their disposal, which brings us back to incentive.  If potential American business owners are not led to believe the system in place values their success, where is the incentive to start a business if the risk so dramatically outpaces any potential reward?  American businesses such as Pfizer and Moderna, who are now vaccinating the world, may not exist today if their entrepreneurs did not believe there was to be payoff for starting a business which offers good products.  Alternatively, the companies may have floundered at their outset had they been compelled to operate under even narrower margins than new businesses already endure, due to a $15 minimum wage.

Furthermore, the latter part of this argument is predicated on a misunderstanding of incentives in economics.  Because we live in a relatively free market system, the incentive for Amazon, for example, to continue to pay workers well as profits increase is the fact that it needs to attract enough potential employees to compensate for the increase in demand for its services.  This principle is why many companies provide healthcare for their employees.  Businesses do not do this for fun or out of simple good will.  Virtually every activity in economics is attached to some incentive, and the incentive for high pay and employer-based healthcare is the same — namely, to ensure they are attractive to workers who will actually carry out the functions of their business on the ground.  Of course, a wider applicant pool increases a business’s chances of finding a better fit for the position, in turn increasing the quality of the firm’s output.  This view of economics also misunderstands the nature of the wealthy CEO.  Business owners generally do not simply hoard wealth in their bank accounts, sitting on piles of money laughing at their menial laborers.  Rather, they invest their wealth either back into their business, improving its efficiency, or they invest by other means such as stocks, bonds, etc., thus stimulating the economy further as a whole.  Many start charities not limited to the United States, (e.g. Bill and Melinda Gates), aiding the international economy as well, or at least affecting the lives of many impoverished populations for the better.  Surely Jeff Bezos enjoys the portion of the wealth he has chosen to access at this point, but to act like the good of the American worker and the good of the business owner are mutually exclusive is a notion born out of a caricatured view of economics.  

All of this points  to the beauty of the free market in America, principally because the preservation of the free market understands that monetary success is a strong incentive both to work well and pay well.  American products tend to be of high quality precisely because we strike that balance and let the free market work as it will.  There is a mutual understanding within a free market economy that both workers and employees must work fairly and efficiently in order to achieve success.  For instance, in 2018, Amazon, the boogeyman of successful American business, resolved to have a minimum wage of $15 per hour  for all of its American workers, without government prompting.  If businesses are robbed of some initial success due to restrictive regulations or a compulsory $15 minimum wage when there is no way to afford it, the convenient services which Amazon provides as well as the hearty salaries even its lowest-level employees may expect — without the job cuts premature legislation would have caused — may never arise.  In fact, Amazon produced half a million jobs in 2020 at a time of high unemployment, and its median wages have increased steadily since the company’s inception.  Nor is a world without any minimum wage an unimaginable travesty.  Countries such as Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, and Switzerland have all survived and prospered with no minimum to this day.  

With only a cursory understanding of economics and a grasp of the incentives which underlie market activity, it is impossible to seriously postulate that a minimum wage is the best way to ensure our workers’ standard of living improves or that America’s production reaches its fullest potential.

Unity, but on Biden's Terms

As the country continues to suffer through the coronavirus pandemic and its associated ills, along with the shock of the attempted insurrection at the Capitol on January 6th, it is a fairly good time for some national unity. In President Joseph R. Biden’s inaugural address on January 20th, he repeatedly emphasized his call for unity (indeed, the whole celebration had the theme of American unity), “that most elusive of things in a democracy”. There is little room to argue with such a sentiment, for as a nation, Americans still hold much in common, despite our disagreements. The question arises, however, as to what Mr. Biden means when he says ‘unity.’ If he meant the reaffirmation of those unifying ideals that undergird America – a commitment to freedom, liberty, respect for natural rights, and equality under the law, then one would be hard-pressed to quarrel with him. But actions, as the saying goes, speak louder than words. Mr. Biden’s behavior, and that of his party, since his taking office point to a very different definition of unity. This ‘unity’ is not voluntary, and it certainly is not about finding common ground. No, this ‘unity’ is about falling in line with the more extreme priorities of the Democratic Party — and make no mistake, many of the policies coming out of the Biden administration are incredibly radical.

Truth, as Mr. Biden suggested in his inaugural address, is an essential facet of a prosperous, free, and civil society. Leaders have “a duty and a responsibility… to defend the truth and to defeat the lies.” The consequences of lies was made painfully clear on January 6th, when criminals stormed the Capitol Building, emboldened by the continuous perpetuation, since President Trump’s defeat on November 3rd, of the untruth of a supposedly ‘stolen’ election. What is painfully ironic, however, is that immediately after Mr. Biden rightly decried the lies that have infected the American polity, he proceeded to spout lies of similar stature. He chose to further the lie of ‘systemic’ American racism, a lie that helped add oxygen to the raging fire of riots and unrest that erupted last June. These were the same riots that caused billions of dollars in damage, devastated cities, and destroyed thousands of businesses and livelihoods. These were the same riots that saw statues of many American heroes, from George Washington to Frederick Douglas, desecrated. And these were the same riots that resulted in the injuring of hundreds, and the deaths of numerous individuals, including Officer David Dorn, whose wife spoke at the RNC in August of 2020. Despite the horrors America witnessed for months on end, Mr. Biden still chose to perpetuate one of the lies that served – indeed, still serves – as the keystone for the unrest. 

Racism still exists in America, and every instance of it must be rooted out – end of story. There can be absolutely no tolerance for racism in society, and it should be called out and confronted whenever it rears its ugly head. America’s governing institutions, however, can no longer be reasonably branded as racist. Legal barriers or penalties based on race have long since been removed, and discrimination long since made illegal. What is left of racism in America occurs almost entirely on an individual basis, and is certainly not widespread. Of course, this is utilizing the definition of racism that the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. would have understood, not the modern, all-encompassing definition of the Left. Racism, properly defined, is the mistreatment of or discrimination against others because of their race. That is not the definition Mr. Biden and his party often adhere to, however. For most of the Left, racism is understood as Ibram X. Kendi defines it: any inequality between race groups. Many on the Left blame everything from wealth inequality to health variations on racism – despite the lack of hard evidence. If one floats any other possibility, no matter how substantive, he must be racist, as he is either blinded by his privilege or interested in perpetuating inequality. Those that question the orthodox opinion are branded as rotten human beings, deserving of being cast out of polite society. In reality, there are plenty of other explanations for existing disparities – explanations that do not include casting broad dispersions upon the nation and its citizens. Take inequality in wealth between black and white Americans, for example. Much of it can be tied to other, very serious, issues, such as the high rate of single-parent households in the black community, or the fact that millions living in the inner city are forced to attend abysmal local public schools (it is worth noting that it is mostly the Democrats, Mr. Biden among them, that refuse to allow school choice). Not all disparities between races are due to racism, but for many on the Left, disparities between races necessarily means racism, and ‘systemic’ racism has become a matter of Gospel truth. Thomas Sowell, one of the greatest economic and political thinkers of recent history, describes this phenomenon well: “Some things are believed because they are demonstrably true, but many other things are believed simply because they have been asserted repeatedly.” ‘Systemic’ racism is believed not because it is backed by solid evidence, but because it is repeated unceasingly as though it is unquestionably true. Going down the rabbit hole of supposed ‘systemic’ racism both stymies efforts to deal with the real problems at hand and divides America along racial lines. But this is beside the point. The problem is that Mr. Biden chose, rather than to further unity through fact, to further disunity through partisan manipulation of the truth. 

In the same vein, one of Mr. Biden’s first executive orders was to reverse the former administration’s crackdown on the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and its analogues in the federal government and among federal contractors. CRT, with its basis in Marxist critical theory, is highly controversial, and rightly so. It pushes the notion that American society, in everything from its social structures to its institutions, is compromised by racism. Everything is viewed through the lens of race and power. It is not about recognizing the great sins of America’s past and the progress it has made; it is about perpetuating the falsehood that America is still deeply racist. Thus, CRT is also extremely dangerous, as it fundamentally undermines the American system – with adherents often endorsing calls for the ‘overthrow’ of institutions – and teaches Americans to hate both their country and, in many cases, themselves. Using federal taxpayer dollars to promote such an ideology is not only immoral, it is also extremely divisive. If Mr. Biden was looking to promote unity, this was not the best route to take. (For an in-depth look at one of CRT’s analogues, the modern anti-racism movement, see the recent article by Staff Writer John Dashe, “Anti Racism: Creating More Racists?”)

Another major executive order, signed during Mr. Biden’s first hours in office, was the revocation of the construction permit for the Keystone XL pipeline. Mr. Biden claims to have taken the action in an effort to stem the progression of climate change and to protect the environment. If these claims were founded in fact, then cancelling the pipeline would be a reasonable policy. Unfortunately, they are more founded in political expediency than anything else. According to Forbes, the Keystone XL pipeline was supposed to transport crude oil from Canada, mainly derived from tar sands, to the Gulf Coast, where most American oil refineries capable of handling this type of crude oil are located. Oil must be refined for it to be of any use, and often refineries are located great distances away from the oil’s point of origin, as is the case with Canadian oil and the Gulf Coast refineries; thus the need for adequate transportation infrastructure. Further, oil will continue to be needed – in vast quantities – for the foreseeable future, so canceling the pipeline will just force its transport via different methods (the alternatives being truck, train, or boat). If the concern is climate change, then Mr. Biden’s executive order is entirely nonsensical. Trucks, trains, and boats all produce far more carbon dioxide than pipelines do, and without adequate pipelines, those alternatives will be the only options. Even if the concern is for oil spills, the case for canceling the pipeline is also lacking. According to the Manhattan Institute, while “pipelines release more oil per spill than rail” (pipelines release less per spill than road), crude oil pipelines have the lowest incident rate compared to road and train transport, making them the safest transport option: 

“Road had the highest rate of incidents, with 19.95 per billion ton miles per year. This was followed by rail, with 2.08 per billion ton miles per year. Natural gas transmission came next, with 0.89 per billion ton miles. Hazardous liquid [including crude oil] pipelines were the safest, with 0.58 serious incidents per billion ton miles.” 

In canceling the permit, Mr. Biden did little for the environment (aside from arguably making the situation worse by forcing transport by more accident-prone methods), and greatly harmed American infrastructure and jobs, despite the devastated economy. It is hard to see how this does anything to further the cause of national unity. 

Executive orders aside, Mr. Biden’s rhetoric on key issues since taking office has also been severely damaging to his stated goal of unity. On the 48th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, Mr. Biden reiterated his goal of codifying Roe into federal law: “The Biden-Harris Administration is committed to codifying Roe v. Wade and appointing judges that respect foundational precedents like Roe.” Since 1973, over 62 million children have been murdered – killed via premature expulsion, mutilation, being torn apart by suction, or through similarly gruesome methods. Codifying Roe would force every state and territory to follow federal abortion policy, all but wiping out states’ abilities to restrict abortion access, and guaranteeing that millions more children will be killed for decades to come. It would codify the stripping of the most basic human right, the right to life, from society’s most vulnerable. Despite the fact that 61% of the Americans believe that there should be restrictions on abortion access, and despite the extreme divisiveness of the issue, Mr. Biden apparently had few qualms with jumping right to the extreme end of the spectrum. It is made worse by the fact that he readily proclaims himself to be a devout Catholic, despite his views on abortion being utterly and undeniably antithetical to the teaching of the Church. Indeed, the Church proclaims the evil of abortion to be the preeminent issue in the nation, and the US Conference of Catholic Bishops called Mr. Biden’s comments “deeply disturbing and tragic”. Mr. Biden not only preaches in support of the nonexistent ‘right’ to murder children, he does so while claiming the mantle of religion. Here, too, it is difficult to pull something unifying out of Mr. Biden’s behavior – it seems to indicate something closer to unity by forced submission. (To read about the secular case against abortion, read my article in the September 2019 edition of the Fenwick Review.)

The Democratic Party, which Mr. Biden leads, has been no less divisive, and the President has done little to steer it in another direction. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY), who leads a razor-thin 50-50 majority (with the Vice President as tie-breaker) in the Senate, has refused to disavow a push to end the Senate filibuster. All but two of his colleagues have either openly called to end the filibuster or have followed his lead in refusing to oppose its elimination. The filibuster, a long-established rule in the Senate, requires a 60-vote margin for most bills to pass. Originally far more extensive than it is today, Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) ended it for judicial nominations in 2013, changing the vote requirement to a simple majority, a policy later extended to Supreme Court nominees. On its surface this may sound fine, but that is because there is a widespread and mistaken understanding of the American system. The Senate was supposed to serve as a barrier to the temporary passions of the people, and the filibuster ensures that those temporary passions do not reign unchecked. Most bills are supposed to have broad support from the populace before they are passed, thus the 60-vote margin. Yes, this causes gridlock, but that is a good thing. A government that responds immediately to every passing passion that sweeps through the populace is a government without stability and liable to make serious — sometimes very damaging — mistakes. It is worth remembering that the parties switch between support and animosity for gridlock depending on which is in power. The party in charge now will not be in charge forever, and gridlock will eventually be something that they will come to appreciate again. Senator Schumer, along with most Democrats in the Senate, want to ram through their policy priorities, despite the fact that half the country still opposes such priorities. Eliminating the filibuster would be devastating for the political climate, for it would allow any party with a slim majority to push through any policy it desires. Mr. Biden, who has previously been receptive to ending the filibuster, has refused to push his party to abandon calls for such a divisive move. There is nothing unifying about forcing down the most extreme policy preferences of a party with a razor-thin majority. 

Finally, Mr. Biden has been nearly silent regarding the upcoming impeachment trial of former President Trump, which is bound to be extremely divisive. It does not help that article of impeachment, which asserts that Mr. Trump incited the Capitol insurrection, is entirely unfounded. This author was heavily critical both of Mr. Trump’s response to the insurrection and of his impact on politics in a previous article, but that does not change the fact that the charge against the former President is incredibly weak. In his highly criticized speech before the insurrection, Mr. Trump explicitly called for a peaceful protest, not a riot. But regardless of one’s views on the article of impeachment itself, there is no longer a solid purpose to the impeachment. Mr. Trump is out of office, so even if one had considered him a threat, he is now powerless. He will also not be convicted, as two-thirds of the Senate is needed to convict, and with 45 Republican Senators voting on January 26th to table the trial, it is highly unlikely that the two-thirds margin will be met. It appears that the main goal of continuing the impeachment process is for the Democrats to milk as much political gain as possible from Mr. Trump’s disgrace – including dividing the Republican Party. If Mr. Biden truly wants unity, he should be pushing his Democratic colleagues to drop the impeachment proceedings. Mr. Trump’s behavior in the months following his election were indeed egregious, and he has suffered the consequences, leaving office disgraced and with abysmal approval ratings. It is now time for the country to move on. Continuing down the road of impeachment simply impedes the healing process that Mr. Biden has repeatedly claimed to want. 

How President Biden chooses to act in the coming months will be crucial to whether the country will heal or continue to fracture. He has a unique opportunity to promote unity, with broad disgust at the events on January 6th and with a widespread desire for some sort of ‘normalcy.’ Unfortunately, if his conduct since his inauguration is any indication, the unity that Mr. Biden has so often called for will not arrive any time soon – at least not the kind of unity that arises organically. The kind of ‘unity’ Mr. Biden seems to want is the kind that arises when his divisive policy preferences are forced upon every American, willing or not. 

Thirty Years of Charter Schools: How Do They Score?

The recent Senate elections in Georgia delivered a victory to Democrats, with Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff edging out incumbents Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue. Beyond symbolic significance (Ossoff and Warnock will be the state’s first Jewish and African-American senators, respectively), the results from Georgia mark a sea change in the political fortunes of President-elect Joe Biden. With Democrats (narrowly) in control of the Senate, Biden will no longer have to rely on Republican votes to confirm judicial picks and cabinet members. Several of the President-elect’s nominees raise serious red flags (like abortion zealot Xavier Becerra for Health and Human Services), while others seem patently unqualified, if unoffensive (like Pete Buttigieg for Transportation). Still others have largely flown under the radar, like Biden’s nominee for Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona, currently Connecticut’s education commissioner and a former public school administrator. He will likely be a shoo-in, not least because unlike a disconcertingly large number of Biden’s nominees, he’s fairly qualified for the position he was nominated for.

Arguably the most prominent issue in the American educational landscape today is that of school choice. On this matter, Cardona gives reason for hope. Upon becoming Connecticut education commissioner two years, he stated that “Charter schools provide choice for parents that are seeking choice, so I think it’s a viable option.” Since 2019, he has established an innocuous (if sparse) record on school choice, reauthorizing all 25 of the state’s charter schools, with none closing or opening during his year-long tenure. In contrast, Biden, once a school choice proponent, is now fiercely opposed, having vowed on the campaign trail that charter schools will be “gone” if he is elected. No doubt the teachers unions, with their deep pockets and tantalizing endorsements, are largely to blame for this. In a November 2019 video published by the National Education Association (NEA), the nation’s largest teachers union, NEA president Lily Eskelsen García tells Biden that charter schools are “very misguided school reforms.” She goes on to say, “You know how we feel about charter schools,” to which Biden responded, “Same way I feel.” He followed up by vowing that “No privately-funded charter school will receive a penny of federal money — none,” a shocking reversal from 2008 and 2012, when the Obama–Biden educational platform called for more charter schools. 

If Biden and his fellow public school zealots represent one extreme, the other lies with public school skeptics like former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, a charter school advocate who in 2015 dismissed traditional public schools as “a dead end.” Before being tapped to join President Trump’s cabinet, the billionaire heiress devoted decades — and a chunk of her family’s fortune — to promoting the school choice cause. As the chair of the Alliance for School Choice, she spearheaded efforts to introduce charters and school vouchers in her home state of Michigan, with mixed success.

How can an issue like charter schools inspire such wildly different opinions? Are charter schools the panacea, as proponents argue, for the struggling American public education system? Or do they underperform, and drain public school budgets, as opponents claim? As it turns out, the answer is somewhere in between — and although charter schools are not perfect, they remain an invaluable option for underprivileged families in struggling school districts in cities across the country.

Part of the problem with making sweeping plaudits or condemnations of charter schools is that there are simply so many of them. America’s first charter school, City Academy, opened in Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 1992. In the nearly three decades since, their numbers have grown exponentially: the most recent federal data from 2016 records approximately 7,000 charter schools nationwide, educating three million students. In some states, charter schools are an unquestionable success. In Florida, for instance, the most recent data shows charter school students outperforming their public school counterparts on 83 percent of measures. Meanwhile, in New York, charter school students gain on average, over the course of the school year, two months more of math and one month more of English compared to public school pupils.

However, in other states, like California, Michigan, and Ohio — to name a few — charters perform about the same or worse than public schools. In these states, inadequate laws and regulations are a key part of the problem. Charter schools exercise a degree of autonomy from public regulations and oversight on the condition that they are accountable for achieving good results. If a charter school is underperforming, the government should be able to close or replace it. However, a Department of Education survey found that more than half of charter school authorizers encountered difficulty closing underperforming schools. In addition, of the twelve percent of all charter schools that have closed, more than two-thirds did so because of financial inviability, not poor performance. In other words, because oversight bodies lack the teeth to enforce high standards, charter schools generally remain open as long as they can pay the bills, regardless of whether they are achieving positive results for their students. When looking at the issue state-by-state, charter schools generally appear to be about as good as the oversight and regulation governing them; Michigan, for example, which has some of the laxest oversight laws, also has some of the worst-performing charter schools, particularly in the city of Detroit. Few states have the mechanisms in place needed to enforce quality control among charter schools – last year, only five states received scores of “mediocre” or above by an educational watchdog agency. This lack of adequate oversight is understandable when considering that charter schools are such a recent phenomenon, but still, without comprehensive, enforceable laws and regulations in place, the door remains open to incompetence, fraud, waste, and abuse.

Still, even in states where charter schools appear to underperform, there is a silver lining. In Arizona, for instance, charter schools reportedly perform slightly worse than public schools – on paper. However, a recent analysis that factored out virtual schools, juvenile detention programs, and schools serving primarily overage students or late transfers, found that charters actually had slightly higher — not lower — test scores and graduation rates. Another example is California, where on average charter schools perform about the same as public schools — except among low-income black and Latino students, for whom charter schools provided math and reading gains greatly exceeding those of local public schools, according to a Stanford University study. These distinctions were especially pronounced in urban areas, where many minority students are concentrated. Studies of charter schools in cities including Boston, Chicago, and New York have replicated these findings. What this means is that while charter schools may not always perform comparatively better in already-good suburban school districts serving predominantly white, middle-income students, they are succeeding where they are needed most: in struggling urban school districts serving low-income, largely minority student bodies.

Of course, test scores and graduation rates are not the only consideration — but charter schools are valuable for other reasons. For one, they are useful for expanding the educational footprint in resource-strapped states and school districts, as well as in areas experiencing population growth. Though charter schools receive public funding, the costs of actually starting a school — like constructing new buildings — is usually footed by the operating organization itself. Additionally, because charter schools are not required to provide the same level of transportation, food offerings, and student support services as traditional public schools, they are less expensive to operate.

An example of where these advantages have proven especially important is Arizona, whose warm climate and inexpensive housing makes it a unique draw for both retirees and young families. In the 2000s, the state was experiencing a population influx and, with a limited budget, was struggling to build and expand enough schools for its fast-growing student population. Rather than settle for overcrowding, Arizona turned to charter schools to fill in the gap. In addition to allowing for the construction of numerous new schools the state would not have otherwise been able to afford, academic performance has increased statewide. Last year, Arizona’s eighth graders demonstrated math skills that rivaled those of its ninth graders back in 2003. As its population continues to age, the United States will need to address a version of the problem faced by Arizona: with more money going towards programs like Social Security and Medicare for retirees, federal and state budgets will have increasingly less leeway to boost spending on schools. Charters will be an evermore appealing option for states that want the best of both worlds: high-quality care for their seniors, and state-of-the-art schools for their children.

Still, test scores, graduation rates, and cost analyses aside, the strongest evidence in favor of charter schools is simply how popular they are. Even with more than 300 new charter schools opening each year, over a million children and teens sit on waiting lists, hoping that a spot will open up for them. More so than with ballots, people vote with their feet — and on this issue, millions of American families have made themselves heard: they want a choice. It may seem like a radical concept — until just thirty years ago, for generations the norm was that every student attended a school chosen for him by his school district. But in reality, for those with means, that was never the only option. If an affluent family was unhappy with the public schools in their district, they have always been able to move to a community with better schools or pay tuition to send their kids to a private school. Even as today’s leading Democrats rail against school choice, they take advantage of a version of it in their own lives: Elizabeth Warren’s son attended an elite private school, while Joe Biden sent his sons to Catholic schools.

School choice has always existed – the only difference was that until thirty years ago, it was the sole privilege of middle- and upper-income families. Charter schools have leveled the playing field by providing different educational options to lower-income families who cannot afford private school tuition or housing in better school districts. Public school partisans – like Bernie Sanders, who during his primary campaign stated, “We do not need two school systems” – may argue that such choices are superfluous. If charter schools often perform little better than traditional public schools, they may ask, then what is the point of having such a choice? Such a premise assumes that test scores are the only measure of a school’s worth. In the real world, families are drawn to a school not just by its academic performance, but other factors as well. Sports, facilities, location, special courses or programs, or a spiritual/cultural atmosphere may all be important considerations. Even students hailing from excellent public school systems may elect to attend a private school for any of those reasons and more. Charter schools extend a degree of that opportunity to families of all colors, incomes, and ZIP codes. Politicians on the right and left have been arguing and pontificating on the issue of charter schools for as long as they have existed, and they likely will for years to come. But for the families of the four million children who attend — or are waiting to attend — charter schools, the question has long been settled.

In spite of the efforts of powerful teachers unions and their Democratic toadies, there are few issues less partisan and with broader general support than charter schools. A poll released last January by the American Federation for Children found overwhelming bipartisan support for school choice, with nearly 80 percent of parents in favor of the option to choose the public school their child attends. More so, the survey found that 58 percent of Democratic primary voters, 62 percent of African-Americans, and 65 percent of Latinos said they would be less likely to support a presidential candidate in favor of eliminating federal funding for charter schools. If not because it is morally right, perhaps political expediency will be reason enough for Biden to return his erstwhile support to the charter school cause. If he truly wants to “united the country” as he says, getting behind school choice would be a perfect starting point. Incoming Secretary Cardona has potential, but he can only succeed on this issue if the President-elect is willing to lead.

Enough.

What happened at the Capitol yesterday was nothing short of a national disgrace. The storming of the legislative building of the United States of America – the beacon of freedom and liberty for all of humanity – irreparably dishonored the nation, and represented a display of the highest form of treachery. This behavior, wholly and entirely unacceptable in any free nation, was the culmination of a long and dangerous trend in American political life, on both sides of the isle: the wholesale disregard of truth and reality. Elements of the American Left have long since fallen into this trap, which was clearly visible in the disgraceful riots and false narratives that were purveyed throughout the past year. But the Left is a subject for a separate analysis, and was not the cause of this latest display of un-American behavior. What happened at the Capitol was the crudest manifestation of a cancerous development in the American Right. 

Only coming to a head in the past couple of years, some sectors of the Right have increasingly taken up the same characteristics of the radical Left, eschewing evidence and objective truth in favor of concocted ‘facts,’ rumor, and political expediency. Part of this is due to the state of American media, which is effectively inseparable from partisan interests, and has no compunction with twisting the truth to fit its desired narratives. In an environment where the traditional purveyors of truth are no longer trustworthy, it should be of no surprise that people begin to create their own ‘truth’ according to the whims of the moment. But that is only part of the problem. There are three other concerns that are the focus of this article: the cult of personality that surrounds Donald Trump, the turn away from objective truth and evidence-based politics, and the complete disregard for principle that accompanies the populism Trump embodies. 

Donald Trump is undeniably a ‘larger than life’ figure in American politics – a quality that is simultaneously both to his advantage and potentially dangerous. He has managed to become the standard bearer of the fight against radical leftism (itself likely the greatest threat to the nation), but with that his personage has sucked most of the proverbial air out of the room. He has come to represent the end-all be-all for many people, the last standing bulwark between leftist tyranny and the American way of life. Further, his personality is entirely domineering – he leaves no room for alternative voices. Because of these issues, he has developed a cult of personality around him, whereby people do not so much identify with the principles of conservatism than they do with the way that Trump supposedly embodies them. In other words, they identify with the man first and the ideas second. Trump in his person, for many, determines the definition of conservatism, the platform of the Republican Party, and anyone who disagrees is simply a ‘RINO’ (Republican in name only) or a traitor, someone to be discarded. In the absence of a trusted source of truth, Trump has become the truth. 

Trump’s claims of election fraud and the ‘steal’ of the election are, indeed, utterly unfounded. Yes, there was very likely some fraud in the 2020 presidential election, probably more so than in 2016 because of the vast expansion of mail-in balloting. Yes, some states bent the constitutionally-established rules for elections. But the fraud was, by all available evidence, nowhere near enough to make up for the substantial deficit in votes that Trump currently has, and the state legislatures have certified the electors, which is final. The courts have reviewed the allegations, and they have unanimously rejected them as either unfounded or severely lacking in evidence. Many of the judges who presided over these cases were Trump appointees. So unless the entire judicial system is utterly corrupted and Trump’s judicial appointments were horrible, it should be clear that the election was won fairly by Joe Biden. 

But with the wholehearted support of Trump and in the environment of distrust that the media has created, there have been widespread rumors and supposed ‘evidence’ floating around that have severely undermined confidence in the election. Many on the Right, with the weight of Trump backing them, have produced an echochamber of sorts, throwing around allegations about widespread fraud and criminality. A now-famous uncontextualized video of hundreds of ballots in Georgia being taken out of suitcases continues to serve as primary evidence for many, despite the fact that its contents have been thoroughly explained by election officials. There are claims of Dominion voting machines being hacked or parts being changed – claims which even Newsmax retracted because they had no evidence to support them. The assertion that the Vice President could overturn the election results during the January 6th certification, which is partly what spurred the riot, is equally erroneous and unconstitutional. These make up but a small fraction of the untruths spread since the election. But Trump continues to echo these and numerous other claims, and people buy into them, not because they are backed by evidence, but because they come from Trump and his allies. 

If Americans cannot operate on the basis of hard evidence and truth, then there cannot be a functioning polity. If the word of a few larger than life politicians is sufficient to serve as proof,  if uncontextualized and uninvestigated information is turned into fact, and if there is a complete unwillingness to think critically and question sources, then Americans are jettisoning the very qualities that make human beings unique among animals: reason. If everything is relativized, with the Left having its ‘truth’ and the Right its own ‘truth,’ there is little to expect other than the collapse of the nation, something terrifyingly close to what was witnessed at the Capitol.

The populism that Trump represents has its own dangers. Populism, by its very definition, lacks principles. The foundations of populism shift with the fleeting whims of the people, whatever is in ‘vogue’ at the time is what the populist politician will latch on to. The Right has long prided itself, rightly, on its principled nature, with respect for the Constitution, the rule of law, equality under the law, and individual rights. But if the Right continues to embrace populism, it will abandon the feature, principle, that distinguishes it from the Left. Further, lack of principles is itself inherently dangerous. Anything is acceptable when principle is thrown away. There are those who argue that storming the Capitol was somehow justified. There are those who argue that overturning an election without adequate evidence is justified. What exactly is not justified in the name of some ever-changing (because there are no principles) goal? The deficit of principle also means that populism means vastly different things to different people, for there is no constant and accepted foundation. For one person populism can be a slightly modified conservatism, while for another it can mean some variant of radicalism. The inherent danger, then, is that there are no definitional limits to what populism can result in, and if history serves as any guide, government without limits is very undesirable.

It is worth noting Trump’s response to the egregious display at the Capitol, as it embodies some of what has been discussed in this article. In a video recording addressing what was then the ongoing storming of the Capitol, Trump said the following:

I know your pain. I know your hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election, and everyone knows it, especially the other side. But you have to go home now, we have to have peace. We have to have law and order, we have to respect our great people in law and order. We don’t want anybody hurt. It’s a very tough period of time. There’s never been a time like this where such a thing happened, where they could take it away from all of us — from me, from you, from our country. This was a fraudulent election, but we can’t play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace. So, go home. We love you, you’re very special. You’ve seen what happens. You see the way others are treated that are so bad and so evil. I know how you feel. But go home, and go home in peace.

He may have included the obligatory call for peace, and asked the rioters to go home, but it is immediately followed by a statement that completely contradicts such a message. Claiming (again, without evidence) that the election was a fraud, and that “they could take it away” is just reaffirming why the rioters stormed the Capitol to begin with! And to express sympathy and appreciation towards the very people who just committed one of the most un-American acts of the last century is equally absurd. There is no respect for the institutions of America, and there is no respect for the Constitution. This was the time that the nation most needed a national address from the President, but it did not receive one. Instead, it received a half-hearted plea for the rioters to go home while simultaneously feeding their fire. Principle, or more importantly, respect for the nation, would necessitate the wholehearted condemnation of the violence. But, of course, there is no principle to be had here.

The American Right needs to return to its Reaganesque roots, and to the principles of traditional American conservatism. It must refuse to follow the Left towards relativism and principle-free politics. It must reject the cult of personality that Trump has managed to create. This does not, and should not, mean a return to the days of Mitt Romney – far from it. It means that the Right must take the good things that the Trump presidency brought, particularly in the realm of confronting the tyrannical culture of the Left, fuse those good things with traditional conservatism, and move forward as a united, principled, and just force with which to confront the incoming Democratic government. Conservatism is just, it is right, and it is the best path forward for the nation. Trumpian populism is not.

Those that participated in the storming of the Capitol must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and should be utterly ashamed at their sickening behavior. Events such as this must never happen again on American soil. Not only are they criminal, but they also provide a propaganda coup for the enemies of freedom. This is the antithesis of the kind of politics the Founders envisioned – there is no justification for what occurred, and there never will be. Now more than ever, the nation needs your prayers. 

'Anti-Racism': Creating More Racists?

In a June 19 letter, following the death of George Floyd, Father Boroughs declared Holy Cross’ intention to be an “actively anti-racist organization.” To accomplish this, the message stated, the College would abide by a new Anti-Racism Action Plan to “promote a culture of anti-racism” at the “individual, departmental, and institutional level.” The plan provides for training workshops, new curriculum, lectures, and other resources — like a new anti-racism website — for students and faculty alike. Despite an ongoing pandemic that has already cost the College more than $15 million in extra spending this year, these measures included the funding of a new — seemingly superfluous — “Associate Provost for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,” and questionable programs like “Self-Care Conversations for Social Justice Activists.” Having already withdrawn at least $5 million from the endowment since March, the College could surely find more pressing uses for these funds, however modest. But the bigger issue with the College’s Anti-Racism Action Plan has nothing to do with finances, but rather, the very essence of “anti-racism” itself.

At first glance, “anti-racism” might seem benign. Opposing racism? What could be wrong with that? The problem is that — despite the name — the “anti-racist” movement in America today doesn’t actually oppose racism as it is traditionally understood. The Oxford Dictionary defines racism as “prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against a person or people” on the basis of race. Ibram X. Kendi, author of the 2019 bestseller How to Be an Antiracist, has a very different understanding. He defines racism as a “marriage” of “policies and ideas that produces and normalizes racial inequities” [emphasis added]. Individual prejudices and discrimination are irrelevant in the eyes of the new “anti-racists.” Instead, policies resulting in inequitable outcomes between different races are the problem. In other words, people aren’t racist, institutions are; discrimination isn’t the problem, disparities in outcome are. 

In Kendi’s mind, different outcomes between different racial groups in any area of life can only be explained as the product of racist policy. Thus, being race-neutral is actually racist — instead, society must become actively anti-racist. The biggest issue with this ideology isn’t even that it is based on fallacy — the best-educated and most successful immigrant group in the country is actually Nigerian-Americans, suggesting that factors other than racism are responsible for some African-Americans’ lack of upward mobility. More problematic are the policy prescriptions Kendi and others propose to address America’s perceived institutional racism. Whereas normal opponents of racism might call for reducing discrimination, today’s “anti-racists” call for more — so long as it is in the service of “creating equity.” This flies in the face of the essential elements of the American experience — individual rights, equality of opportunity, impartial application of the law. At its worst, “anti-racist” ideology verges on totalitarianism — in a recent Politico op-ed, Kendi calls for constitutional amendment to establish a “Department of Antiracism” to ensure that all federal, state, and local policies result in equality of outcome (which, of course, is impossible to achieve).

Orwellian proposals like this would be terrifying if they weren’t so ludicrous. Nevertheless, such ideas are not inconsequential, not least because they distract from real, visible instances of racism that can be actionably addressed in society. Kendi, preferring to focus on broad statistical disparities and policy impacts, dismisses the significance of individual actions, despite the fact that the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights resolved nearly 5,000 discrimination complaints in the last three years alone. “Anti-racist” ideology — with its vague, unworkable solutions for broad societal disparities — appears to actually make the work of combating racism much harder. In the last three years, the Trump administration closed twice the number of racial school-discipline cases and six times as many sexual-violence cases than the “anti-racist” Obama administration did in the three years prior. And it was President Trump, not Obama, who addressed perhaps the most prominent remaining example of structural racism in the United State today — mandatory minimum sentencing — with the 2018 signing of the First Step Act. As Kenneth L. Marcus, assistant secretary of education for civil rights between 2018 and 2020, put it in the Wall Street Journal, “It turns out there is a price to be paid when we take our eyes off of racial (or sex) discrimination.” As he explained, resolving systemic failures is often accomplished by addressing many individual incidents. If you neglect individual cases, as Kendi and the “anti-racists” do, you can never solve racism at the structural level.

If individual instances of racism are inconsequential, what do the “anti-racists” propose we focus on instead? Apparently, anything and everything. In one laughable example, Kendi told Vox’s Ezra Klein in a recent interview that even a theoretical capital gains tax reduction would be racist, since black Americans own proportionally fewer stocks compared to whites. Such an all-encompassing mindset not only precludes finding workable solutions, but inevitably leads to a dangerously fatalistic worldview in which racial resentments permeate every aspect of life. Ta-Nehisi Coates’ bestselling 2015 book Between the World and Me provides a prime example of this phenomenon in action. Although Coates writes that he intends to illuminate the “racist violence that has been woven into American culture” for centuries, the book instead illustrates the bitterness, contempt — and even hatefulness — that define the fatalistic view of race relations shared by Coates, Kendi, and other “anti-racists.” In this mindset, white supremacy is written into America’s DNA, and is effectively impossible to overcome. Like Kendi, Coates provides sweeping, abstract condemnations of the current system, but balks at offering solutions. To provide just one example — the systemic denial of mortgages to black people in the past rightly infuriates Coates, but so does the granting of mortgages to them today, because they are likely to experience foreclosure, which he views as “plunder.”

So what is the solution here? Apparently, there isn’t one — but Coates might be fine with that, because more than anything else, he just wants to express his deep contempt for America. This is made clear through vivid descriptions of events that, to a normal person, would seem fairly innocuous — but to Coates are defined by noxious racial dynamics. One example Coates revisits repeatedly in the book is an incident in which his four-year-old son was pushed in a New York City escalator by a white woman who said, “Come on,” to get him to move. This surely must have been unpleasant, but it hardly seems extraordinary. I have to imagine a great deal of shoving and rudeness occurs daily in New York — presumably, much of it white-on-white as well. Was this the result of a woman late for her morning commute? Or just plain inconsideration? Preposterous! As Coates tells it, this represented a form of modern-day slavery. “Someone had invoked their right over the body of my son,” he writes. In another example, he recalls seeing a young white couple pushing strollers down the sidewalk in Harlem, their toddlers beside them. A sign of gentrification? Sure. Nevertheless, to most people this would be a fairly inoffensive sight — but think again. To Coates, this sight sends a nefarious message of racial superiority — he writes “The galaxy belonged to them, and as terror was communicated to our [black] children, I saw mastery communicated to theirs.” Ideally, such a response to the sight of children playing on the sidewalk might warrant an appointment with a psychologist. But because it is Ta-Nehisi Coates, observations like these have now earned an esteemed place in high school and college libraries across the country.

Unfortunately, this worldview is not just confined to the “benign-but-ludicrous.” At its worst, it surpasses bitterness and verges on hatred. In perhaps the most astonishing portion of his book, Coates writes that his “heart was cold” while witnessing the September 11 attacks. He explains, “I could see no difference between the officer who killed Prince Jones [a black man killed by a police officer] and the police who died, or the firefighters who died. They were not human to me. Black, white, or whatever, they were the menaces of nature… which could — with no justification — shatter my body.” Hyperbole aside, Coates provides little rationale for why firefighters should be disparaged over the issue of police violence — let alone why the 98.9 percent of 9/11 victims who were not police officers deserve such callous disregard. But then, hatred is rarely rational.

Unfortunately, such vitriolic tendencies are not unique to Coates — the aforementioned Kendi, today’s most prominent “anti-racist” advocate, is another prime offender. On September 26, following the Supreme Court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett (who adopted two children from Haiti), Kendi tweeted,

“Some White colonizers ‘adopted’ Black children. They ‘civilized’ these ‘savage’ children in the ‘superior’ ways of White people, while using them as props in their lifelong pictures of denial, while cutting the biological parents of these children out of the picture of humanity.”

As Fraser Myers writes in Spiked, “The language he employs sounds anti-racist… But the conclusion one surely has to draw from his reasoning is racist.” But don’t just take it from him — the white supremacist Richard Spencer soon retweeted Kendi’s post, adding “Not wrong.”

This may be controversial (hear me out), but if your opposition to racism is bringing you into common cause with… well, racists… you’re probably doing something wrong. But maybe that shouldn’t be so unexpected. After all, racists and “anti-racists” today seem to have an awful lot in common — most importantly, an all-consuming obsession with race, and a preoccupation with racial preservation. Whereas past racists used segregation to keep blacks away from whites, today’s “anti-racists” create segregated spaces to keep whites away from people of color. This is not to denigrate the legitimate value of having groups for people of minority racial and ethnic backgrounds to find support and solidarity, but when such spaces are undergirded by premises of perpetual victimhood and oppression, they can only be harmful to race relations — and to people of color themselves, by handicapping their ability to succeed in a multiracial society. This is best exemplified (again) by Kendi himself. In How to Be an Antiracist, he describes his first, frightful night in Virginia, “worried the Ku Klux Klan would arrive any minute.” But Kendi is 38… and this was in 1997. The shackles of racial fear and victimhood are surely not conducive to mental health — and certainly not success in competitive educational and professional fields. Racism (often in muted forms) still exists, but adding fictitious racial bogeymen, and sowing seeds of racial distrust and resentment on top of that, is the last thing black Americans — and the country — need. Such a fatalistic victim mentality, if allowed to spread, will only create a self-fulfilling prophecy of degraded race relations and poor socioeconomic mobility among underprivileged people of color.

To return to our own institution, it is worth asking what Holy Cross has to gain from embracing “anti-racism.” As it turns out… very little that is not already being done. One of the major goals of the Anti-Racism Action Plan, for example, is to recruit a more diverse body of students and faculty. But according to data from this semester, the College’s student body is already 26 percent nonwhite, higher than the percentage for Massachusetts as a whole (22 percent). And of tenure-track faculty hires in the last five years (before the anti-racism plan was adopted), 36 percent were people of color, already higher than the nonwhite proportion of recent doctoral graduates (33 percent). Evidently, the College has already been able to make great strides in recent years to achieve a racially-balanced faculty and student body. Holy Cross should continue to seek out diverse talent — but it needn’t self-flagellate and kowtow to the polarizing, unsavory “anti-racist” ideology while doing so. The best alternative would be to reject peddlers of hate like Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ibram X. Kendi, and embrace the visions of true anti-racist leaders like the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who famously said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

2020 House Elections: Foreshadowing a Post-Trump GOP

In recent times, the Republican Party has had a reputation of being a white, monoethnic party while the Democratic Party has maintained a reputation of being a racially diverse, poor and working class party.  However, the 2020 US House of Representative Elections deviate from these reputations.  

 In the 2018 elections, Republicans had a net loss of 10 women compared to Democrats’ net gain of 24 women.  Realizing this unsettling gap, incumbent Republican Congresswomen, such as Elise Stefanik (R-NY21) and Susan Brooks (R-IN05), worked hard between 2018 and now to recruit 277 female GOP candidates, 94 of whom won their district’s Republican nomination, and 31-32 of whom won their respective race.  

House Republicans added a record number of women to their ranks, so many, in fact, that this year was coined “The Year of the Republican Woman.” Republicans will add 18-19 new women  (one race outstanding) compared to Democrats’ 9; Democrats will only net gain 1 woman, for they lost 8 women either to retirements or losses to Republicans.  This compares with Republicans’ net gain of 16-17 women since only two GOP women retired while none lost re-election. In fact, of the 12 Democratic seats flipped so far by Republicans, 9 of them were flipped by Republican women. 

Additionally, the GOP doubled the number of ethnic minorities in their House Conference.  While the House Democratic Caucus will still be more ethnically diverse than the Republican Conference, the incoming freshman class shows a troubling trend for Democrats - a diversifying Republican Party.  

Republicans added twice as many Hispanics/Latinos to congress this year than the Democrats (4 GOP, 2 Dem). While the Democrats will still have a large majority of Hispanics/Latinos in Congress, this upward trend for Republicans is consistent with the voting shift of Latino populations in Florida and Texas.  Many majority Hispanic/Latino districts and counties shifted several percentage points toward Trump and the GOP, showing how large this shift is.  Prime examples of this are FL-27 and TX-15 as well as Miami-Dade County, FL and Val Verde and Zapata Counties, TX.  FL-27 shifted 8 points, TX-15 shifted 18 points, Miami-Dade, FL shifted 14 points, Val Verde, TX shifted 18 points, and Zapata, TX, a county last won by Republicans in 1920, shifted 38 points toward Republicans.

In addition to welcoming more Latinos to Congress than the Democrats, the Republicans also gained 2 Asian-American Republicans in the House, while the Democrats netted 0 (They added 2 representatives but also lost 2 representatives.).  Congresswomen-elect Young Kim (R-CA39) and Michelle Steel (R-CA48) are two of the three first Korean American women elected to Congress (the other being Rep-elect Marilyn Strickland (D-WA10)). Democrats will still have a majority of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Congress, but the fact that Democrats netted 0 Asian American/Pacific Islanders while Republicans added 2 should catch Democrats’ attention.

Republicans also added 2 African-Americans to Congress, Congressmen-elect Burgess Owens (R-UT04) and Byron Donalds (R-FL19), compared to Democrats’ 6. Taking into account retirements and defeated incumbents, Republicans have a net gain of 1, and Democrats have a net gain of 5. (Rep. Will Hurd (R-TX23) retired, and Rep. Lacy Clay (D-MO01) lost re-nomination.) 

While the Democrats still added three times the amount of African Americans to Congress, Republicans ran many prominent African-American candidates such as Kim Klacik (MD07), Tamika Hamilton (CA03), Joe Collins (CA43), and Wesley Hunt (TX07). Klacik and Collins both gained national attention for their social media advertisements, Klacik walking through “real Baltimore,” and Collins critiquing Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA43) for living in a mansion outside of her impoverished district.  Hamilton and Hunt outperformed all polls and predictions and came within single digits of defeating their opponents in Democratic-leaning districts.  These Black Republican candidates, though unsuccessful in their bids this election cycle, have bright futures in a changing, post-Trump GOP.

Republicans also elected the first Iranian American Representative, Stephanie Bice (R-OK05), as well as former-Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA50) of Lebanese descent, giving Republicans a majority of Arab/Middle Eastern Representatives in Congress.  The Democrats added no Arab/Middle Eastern Americans this year.  In fact, they will have 2 fewer Arab/Middle Eastern Representatives than they had in the previous Congress; Rep. Donna Shalala (D-FL27) and Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D-FL26) lost re-election. These Republican gains and Democratic losses of Arab/Middle Eastern Representatives are in spite of attempts by Democrats to paint the GOP as the party of Islamophobia.

Republicans also added Yvette Harrell (R-NM02), a member of the Cherokee Nation, to Congress, while the Democrats added no Native Americans this election cycle.  This will give the GOP a majority of Native Americans in the House during the 117th Congress.  This is yet another troubling result for Democrats, especially since they are unlikely to make electoral progress in the House under a Biden/Harris Administration.

In addition to Republican women and ethnic minorities added by Republicans this year, the GOP also added 4 members who are naturalized citizens: Young Kim (CA39; South Korea), Michelle Steel (CA48; South Korea), Carlos Giménez (FL26; Cuba), and Victoria Spartz (IN05; Soviet Union/Ukraine).  This compares to the Democrats’ 0 naturalized citizens added this year (-1 net loss when considering defeated incumbents).

Here is a chart showing new women, ethnic minorities, and naturalized citizens to the House this year:

Here is a chart taking retirements and defeated incumbents into account:

In response to the Left-wing “Squad” that includes the infamous outspoken Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY14), four incoming Republican members who either grew up under Socialist regimes or are children of refugees from Socialist regimes have formed an anti-Socialist “Freedom Squad.”  These Representatives-elect are Carlos Giménez (R-FL26), Victoria Spartz (R-IN05), Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY11), and Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL27).  Malliotakis, the only Republican Representative from New York City, stated the purpose of forming the Freedom Squad: “Freedom for a strong economy. Less government. That’s why our families fled oppressive regimes. Our families fled from oppressive countries with the very same policies that AOC and the Squad are promoting.”  

It is clear that the election predictions and polls were wrong in many House races.  For instance, 11 House races were won by republicans that at least two major political pundits rated as ‘Lean, Likely, and/or Safe D.’  These districts are from across the country, from the South in Texas and Florida, to the West Coast in California, to the Midwest in Iowa, to the East Coast in New York.  Each of these races were flipped by a Republican woman or ethnic minority.

Republicans outperformed in almost every race, even coming close to flipping many “Safe D” seats across the country.  A prime example of this is Texas-15, an 80% Hispanic and normally Safe Democratic district, where the Republican nominee, Monica De La Cruz-Hernandez, came within 3% of unseating Democratic incumbent Vicente Gonzalez.  This compares to Gonzalez’s comfortable 20% margin in 2018. The same pattern is manifest in certain districts of Virginia, New York, Illinois, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and California.  The Democratic representatives for these seats should especially be concerned for 2022 and 2024.

Overall, the 2020 US House elections show a bright future for the post-Trump GOP.  While the GOP lost the Presidency and at least 1 Senate seat, they still gained seats in the House despite election predictions and polls.  The newfound diversity of the House Republican Conference strikes a blow to the false assertion that all Republicans are white supremacists and male chauvinists; it foreshadows the post-Trump GOP being a mulit-ethnic party. Assuming that 2022 follows historical precedent, the Democrats are likely to lose seats - and even the majority - in the House, especially if they continue the leftward trend of the Squad.  These trends should scare Democrats and excite Republicans for down-ballot races between now and 2024, and even “Safe Democratic” seats are not safe from the hands of the diversifying post-Trump GOP.

The Resurgence of Marxism

As George Santayana once said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” There is an alarming trend among academics and younger generations to embrace Marxist ideas that have consistently resulted in abject failure. Recent YouGov data indicates that communism is viewed favorably by more than one out of every three Millennials, with even higher percentages for Gen-Z. According to academia.org, self-identifying Marxist professors in the United States outnumber their conservative counterparts four to one. 

 An idea is only as good as its results. The causes of fairness and equality espoused by youthful generations are noble in intent and should be pursued. Poverty and inequality are the natural enemies of any developed state, but the means by which Marxist groups have sought to achieve equity have never produced more equitable societies. Instead, these ideas have destroyed states and created a dismal quality of life. If ‘equality’ means equal misery for all, then the new wave of Marxism is correct in its advocacy. The responsibility for this resurgence of collectivist thought rests on the public and higher education systems for excluding Marxist failures from basic curricula.  

There have been many iterations of Marxism and many different types of Marxists. This evaluation addresses overlapping, core principles, such as the abolition of private property, the forced redistribution of wealth, the centralization of state planning, and the censorship of dissident groups. The majority of the Marxist movement is fueled by an ignorance of Marxism’s failures, while a minority of its followers dismiss all criticisms with the excuse, “It hasn’t been implemented properly.” Evidently, it is somehow unreasonable to hold up any of the numerous Marxist failures to the same real-world scrutiny and analysis that other economic systems receive. To address the majority of American Marxists, one must undertake a basic review of Marxism’s murderous history. To address the ‘enlightened’ minority, one must examine the motivations of human behavior ‒ imperfection, greed, laziness, malign external influences ‒ that preclude the functioning of Marxism. 

There is an additional sect of the left that mischaracterizes Scandinavian countries as models for ‘democratic socialism’. This faction, spearheaded by Senator Bernie Sanders, seeks to use the Scandinavian model as justification for the advancement of fundamentally Marxist principles. By examining these countries’ corporate tax systems and policies, it becomes clear that Denmark, Sweden, and others have rejected Marxism, and have prospered under capitalism.

A RECORD OF FAILURE

From the Soviet Union to Cuba, Marxist principles have caused mass starvation, violence, hyperinflation, and civil strife. This section will provide an overview of several Marxist experiments. The World Bank index of economic freedom ranks countries based on rule of law, government size, regulatory efficiency, and market openness. This and other indexes offer strong context for an examination of Marxism in practice.

Exhibit A - Venezuela

The Venezuelan downfall began as a socialist proclamation of ‘equality and fairness,’ and has resulted in an oppressive dictatorship at the hands of Nicolás Maduro. The regime is one of the least economically free countries in the world, coming in second to last on the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom. Venezuela was once a wealthy and prosperous country with a high average quality of life. But a series of ‘progressive’ steps have resulted in 90% of its citizens being unable to buy enough food. In 1992, it became the third richest country in the northern hemisphere. In 2001, it voted for a socialist president, Hugo Chavez, who promised to alleviate ‘income inequality.’ In 2004, private healthcare was completely socialized. By 2005, most private farmland, companies, and shops were seized and nationalized by Chavez. As Marx stated, “the theory of the communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property”.  In 2009, the Venezuelan socialists banned all private ownership of firearms (because Hitler, Castro, Quaddafi, Stalin, Idi Amin, Mao, Pol Pot, and Kim Jong-Il all agree that gun control works). In 2012 Bernie Sanders praised Venezuelan ‘progress,’ calling it “The American Dream”. In 2014, the government imprisoned many opposition leaders because they were a threat to the socialists’ lust for power. By 2016, food and healthcare shortages had become widespread. In 2017, the country’s Constitution and elections were suspended. In 2018, Venezuela’s inflation increased by 65,000%. Citizens are massacred in extrajudicial killings by their own government and the Maduro regime looks to rule indefinitely. Venezuela’s government documented 5,300 killings in 2018 alone by security operations for cases of “resistance to authority”. It took less than twenty years for ‘equality and fairness’ policies to bring Venezuela from a global power to a humanitarian relief subject. 

Exhibit B - Cuba

In the 1950s Cuba had Latin America’s third-highest per capita income, third-longest life expectancy, and lowest mortality rate. But like many other Marxist experiments, it was only a matter of time before ‘equality and fairness’ ruined the entire state. Fidel Castro was 31 years old when he seized power in 1959 and was instantly revered by the young leftists of the 1960s. Socialist Cuba was meant to be a model of ‘revolutionization’ by Marxist intrigue and utopianism. Today, empty shelves are a common sight for most Cubans. The private sector accounts for no more than 7% of GDP, while Cuba is one of the lowest-ranked countries on the Economic Freedom Index. Poor centralized management sees citizens using depressingly low state issued salaries, sometimes less than a dollar a day, to pay exorbitant sums for food on the black market. The Communist Party of Cuba suppresses many types of speech and opposition through raids, beatings, and imprisonment, namely of Unión Patriótica de Cuba (the main dissent group in Cuba) members. The Cuban Regime cracks down on artistic expression as well. Decree 349 requires Cuban musicians, dancers, artists, and writers to seek government permission for their work. For the young Marxists today who proclaim their love for diverse culture and art, it is notable that this very ‘diversity’ and ‘rebellion’ is nonexistent in Cuba and every other place where communism has been implemented. Many millennials and Gen-Z-ers adore Instagram, Snapchat, and other social media platforms. But in Cuba, independent media exists only online, and is made prohibitively expensive by the Communist Party. Instead, Cubans may purchase the state-sanctioned internet and media at a ‘discounted’ price. The Cuban government does not offer Snapchat, unfortunately. 

Exhibit C - North Korea

According to the Economist and the World Bank, North Korea is among the most authoritarian and least free states in the world. Most North Koreans, malnourished and without access to the internet, live on rations provided by the government. Marketplace lists the obscure state’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita at $665 (by comparison, the United States’ is about $63,000). The North Korean state runs the economy, employs people, and decides prices and wages. While North Korea officially replaced communism with Juche, or ‘for the state’ ideology, Marxist principles remain central. There is a command economy, with total state control of industry and agriculture, collectivized farms, and state-run education and healthcare. Similar to the Soviet Union, North Korea launched various five-year plans for industry and agriculture with centralized state planning. Aside from the economic mismanagement that plagued these efforts, a series of natural disasters exacerbated the situation. The centrally-planned system was too inflexible to manage floods and droughts. According to the Vienna University of Economics and Business, 60% of North Koreans live in absolute poverty today. One might ponder why the North Koreans have not switched to a new type of economy. The truth is that the North Korean power structure, like many other Marxist models, cements a certain group at the top. Once in control of the state resources and police, this regime can retain its absolute power by oppressing the general populace and silencing dissidents. Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, commented “Kim Jong-Un has picked up where his father and grandfather left off, by overseeing a system of public executions, extensive political camps, and brutal forced labor.” A system as terrifying as this would seem a far cry from the ‘equitable’ paradise that modern collectivists believe they can achieve with state control.

Exhibit D - Cambodia

The Khmer Rouge communist regime, in power from 1975-1979, ruled brutally and killed nearly two million people. Pol Pot, the head of state, forced millions of people from the cities to work on communal farms in the countryside, with entire families dying from starvation, disease, overwork, and execution. The Khmer Rouge was known as the Communist Party of Kampuchea, the name used by the communists for Cambodia. The supporters of this movement detested capital, and believed that they had no need for money. Pol Pot, upon seizing power, abolished money, private property, and religion. Anyone believed to be intelligent, or an intellectual, was executed. Swaths of the educated middle class were killed, along with others deemed to be threats to the Marxist agenda. The attempted genocide of the Cham and Vietnamese minorities was merely the Khmer Rouge’s means of promoting peace, equality, and equity. 

Exhibit E - The Soviet Union

Ludwig Von Mises theorized three years after the Russian Revolution that communism would fail because the government had no market prices to guide the planning of production. Mises’ prediction, unsurprisingly, came true. The central planning of the USSR was meant to ensure ‘plenty’ for everyone. Instead, millions of Russians starved in the 1920s and 1930s. All materials, labor, tools, and machines used by the Soviet Government were owned and controlled exclusively by government planners, and the resultant unexchangeable nature of goods and services prevented the development of market prices. In making decisions, planners must understand the relative or market values of numerous factors of production along with a myriad of other factors of the market, and doing so is effectively impossible. Without market prices, the coordination of production activities can never meet consumer needs. As Mises wrote in 1920, “Every step that takes us away from private ownership of the means of production and from the use of money also takes us away from rational economics.” Of course, if a Soviet citizen merely suggested an alternative to the failing central planning, he would be reported by his neighbors, blacklisted, captured by the KGB (secret Soviet police force), and hauled off to the Gulag to labor endlessly to death in abhorrent conditions. It would demonstrate tunnel vision to claim that a single economic factor was wholly responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union. There were many dimensions and pressures behind its fall, but the central planning model was the prime catalyst for mass starvation and chaos.

THE MISCHARACTERIZED ‘SOCIALISM’ OF SCANDINAVIA

Politicians like Bernie Sanders regularly assure their supporters that they want the ‘friendly Swedish model’ of ‘democratic socialism,’ rather than the hard boot of Soviet-style communism. There is, however, a glaring flaw with this contention: Scandinavian countries are not socialist. Instead, they are generous welfare states paired with capitalism. Sweden, Norway, and Denmark are all within the top echelon of the World Bank and Heritage Foundation Economic Freedom Index. The trio is on par with the United States’ index ranking. In Sweden and Norway, some surprising absences are a federal insurance contributions tax (FICA, the Social Security tax), minimum wage, and estate and inheritance taxes. 

It is true that these three countries all have government-sponsored college education, paid parental leave, and state-subsidized healthcare. But the means by which funding is raised for these programs differs from Sanders’ propositions of highly progressive taxation for corporations. To pay for more social programs, the Scandinavian countries extract a very high, optimized tax from a large portion of the population (the middle class pays about the same rate as the top 1% in taxes, which is exactly what Sanders and his ilk claim not to want, but would clearly have to implement to pay for their policies), while mostly leaving businesses to do business. By providing a friendly and transparent regulatory and tax environment for businesses, Scandinavian countries are able to tax individuals at a higher rate. 

Scandinavian entrepreneurs thrive. These countries are regularly ranked among the world’s best places to start a business. Forbes even ranks Sweden as the second best country in this area. The corporate tax rates in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, are 22 percent, 24 percent, and 21.4 percent, respectively. These figures are competitive with the EU average of 21.3 percent and the current U.S. rate of 21 percent (which most on the left want to raise substantially). The economic environment in Scandinavia is also attractive because of regulatory efficiency and transparency. Denmark, for example, allows employers to adjust their workforces rapidly in response to changing market conditions. The corporate legal systems in all three countries process cases transparently and efficiently. 

Finally, Scandinavian economies are open and encouraging to foreign investment. With lower tariff rates than the EU average of 2.8 percent for non-agricultural products, Denmark and Sweden facilitate large flows of investment. Norway’s rate is slightly higher, at 3.1 percent, but the country’s investment code is efficiently administered. 

HUMAN MOTIVATION AND BEHAVIORAL AVERSION TO MARXISM

Human nature constitutes a core aversion to Marxism in practice. The inherently human characteristics of imperfection, greed, and laziness are significant parts, although not the entirety, of this picture. To define human nature is virtually impossible —and is equally unverifiable. However, it is argued that the majority of people operate more towards the polar of self-interest than that of pure altruism (the desire to help others). This concept is well established in the theory of psychological egoism, which states that behind every action is a selfish motive. The theory especially holds that ‘altruistic’ actions, or ones performed for the good of others, are actually performed for the benefit of the performer. This benefit could be in the form of a will to go to heaven, a desire for public recognition, or even for the simple pleasure of emotional gratitude that comes in helping others. Psychological egoism is not entirely accurate, because there are select instances when people act more for the good of others than for themselves. But the vast majority of people, in most of their actions, act foremost for some personal gain.

Epicurus, a famous Greek philosopher, once commented, “Pleasure is the first good. It is the beginning of every choice and every aversion. It is the absence of pain in the body and of troubles in the soul.” Since Epicurus’ arguments in the first century BCE, modern science has provided strong evidence that humans prioritize pleasure. Serotonin is the chemical in our brains that is associated with feelings of happiness. When a person moves up in any hierarchy, their brain makes more serotonin available. Hierarchy means the natural social systems and corresponding competition that are established in any environment, by any given group of people: the tribe, the firm, the high school class rankings, the NASCAR race, or even the TikTok views. In each of these structures, people are moving up or down in terms of position relative to the top and bottom of a hierarchy. 

As psychologist Jordan Peterson explains, most hierarchies are natural, because most people need to organize themselves into groups to solve complex problems. However, some hierarchies are good, and some are bad. A blood drive is a good hierarchy with competition because it benefits the health of society. A well-functioning company that provides a valuable and affordable product while allowing meritable employees to advance in rank is a good hierarchy. A country that allows free and open elections and has a constitution for individual rights while actually ensuring those rights equally is a good hierarchy. The common component in each of these examples is consent. People, on their own initiative, voluntarily give something up ‒ a good, service, time, effort ‒in exchange for an advancement in the situational hierarchy, and in turn, for a spike in serotonin (again, chemical happiness). 

Given that consent is the common denominator in positive scenarios, the opposite, coercion, must serve as the underpinning for negative hierarchies. Here is where bad, unnatural hierarchies form. These can be labeled as ‘bad’ and ‘unnatural’ because they are built upon coercion, such as fear, violence, or threats. A drug lord extorting money and possessions from the residents in his domain constitutes an unhealthy power structure for two main reasons. First, the top position, the drug kingpin, is occupied through coercion. Second, the other movers in the hierarchy, the regular residents, have no options to improve their position without either furthering coercion or being coerced. They can either join the kingpin’s gang in committing crimes, or they can defend themselves and their property, in turn risking punishment from the druglord. A racist and coercive system such as the Jim Crow South represents another negative, unnatural hierarchy with the same criteria. George C. Wallace, the racist governor of Alabama in 1972, occupied that top position by enforcing and promoting racist coercions. During Jim Crow, African Americans in Alabama and other states were severely limited in hierarchical mobility, and were at constant risk of being coerced or murdered. Finally, the overall system itself was clearly not beneficial to anything besides racism and oppression, and so it was rightly toppled. Coercive hierarchies tend to crumble after a period of evident failure and injustice. 

In this distinction between consensual and coercive hierarchies lies the difference between capitalism and communism. In a consensual system, the people are incentivized, and able, to move up and down the power structure because this movement corresponds to their pleasure and happiness. In a coercive system, the people are rarely able to move up and down the power structure, and are therefore less incentivized to do anything (and, it is worth noting, coercion is often required if one is to move up or down). A consensual system is active while a coercive system is static, and stagnation accurately describes Marxist structures. A Soviet citizen once said, “They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work.” People in the USSR had little reason to work if they could not receive the true benefits of that work and the ensuing opportunity for social mobility. Russian economist Grigory Yavlinsky, who eventually became an important advisor to Gorbachev, once commented, “The Soviet System is not working because the workers are not working.” In chapter II of the Manifesto, Marx attempted to quell worries about laziness in a communist system, “It has been objected that upon the abolition of private property, all work will cease, and universal laziness will overtake us.” These objections mostly became true, not only in the USSR, but in numerous other communist countries where production dropped significantly. In each Marxist example, an individual or group occupies the top of the hierarchy by coercion or force, prevents individuals from moving up and down freely, and does not create positive results for a majority of the unit. Along these lines, humans, with their desire for pleasure and mobility, do not, and can not, function well within a Marxist system. 

CONCLUSION

Marxism has always resulted in a rigid power structure built on coercion, with suffering and poverty for the citizens and power for the ruling regime. The two major flaws in Marxist thinking are the belief that equality of outcome is possible, and the notion that people are not hungry for power. Once schools begin teaching about the dire history of Marxism, perhaps more students will come to understand the flaws of the doctrine. Unfortunately, many curricula now paint Marxism in a positive light. For students in California, capitalism is defined as “a form of power and oppression” and is used to “dehumanize” people. California school committees would not be pleased to find the ethnic cleansing or oppression that have occurred in numerous nations influenced by Marxism. Capitalism is not a perfect economic system, but it is undoubtedly superior to a model that has failed one-hundred percent of the time it has been implemented.