Craig Common Sense

“A great man is always willing to be little.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

“God sends no one away empty except those who are full of themselves.”
– Dwight L. Moody

I get as alarmed about racial tensions and the violent demonstrations that often go with them as anyone. But one thing that I usually note with a rueful smile is the cast of characters who immediately rush in whenever we find ourselves in one of these difficult situations. The Reverend Al Sharpton is almost invariably there. Maybe Reverend Sharpton adds a calming influence in times of trouble and is a comfort to those who are embroiled in the troubles. He may be motivated to really do the right thing and to try to help. The cynical side of me thinks that maybe he just craves being the center of attention.

Sort of along these lines, I have read several accounts of social events at Mar-a-Lago in Florida where a special uninvited guest appeared and took the opportunity to address the attendees – former president Trump. I am sure the dumbfounded guests were taken aback, and really, what would you do if the former president showed up? Refuse to let him speak? I am not a Trump fan but geez, he IS the former president!! You MUST let the President speak, must you not? Perhaps Mr. Trump is just a social butterfly with a million friends who just enjoys celebrating with people. But that cynicism in me keeps rearing its ugly head again and tells me that may he TOO craves being the center of attention. OH shoot, after seeing his hourly tweets for four years I KNOW he loves being the center of attention.

What a contrasting experience we had last week. We had a tragedy in our extended family. Jan and I attended an INCREDIBLY sad funeral for a great young man stuck down literally in the prime of his life, leaving his wife and three children. Amid the grief that was freely flowing before, during and after the funeral I noted our Governor Walz in attendance. He was so unobtrusive that I had to look several times to make certain that it was him. It then occurred to me that our loved one was a student of his while he was a teacher in Mankato and played football for him while in high school. There was no fanfare with his arrival or departure, no press conference, no security detail (at least that I was able to detect) and no statements to the press. He simply came, grieved with the rest of us and left.

I am making no comments on how Governor Walz has served us through a couple of pretty difficult years. I am just noting how unusual it is for a public figure to not be in self-promotion mode twenty-four-seven-three sixty-five. Indeed, it seems that this is the road to success in so many avenues of life. Oh, how I long for servant leaders, leaders who do not seek for themselves but literally just want to do the work, to provide what their constituents need – whether the constituents are fans, customers, or citizens. I think that is one of the most admirable traits exhibited by George Washington, our greatest servant leader. He really did NOT seek acclaim. He commanded our armed forces in the Revolutionary War only out a sense of duty. And when the war was done and there were those who would have made him king, he wanted no part of any such thing. He resigned his commission and retreated back to Virginia until he was called again and reluctantly agreed to serve as President. He was truly my-kind-of-guy!!

“Notwithstanding the boasted virtue of America, it is more probable that we shall exhibit the last melancholy proof, that mankind are not competent to their own Government without the means of coercion in the Sovereign.”
George Washington – In a Letter to John Jay

I have previously confessed that I enrolled in a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) from Yale a couple of years ago. The subject matter was the American Revolution. That was a lot of work, but I so enjoyed that experience that I found another course entitled “America’s Founding Fathers” taught by Dr. Allen C. Guelzo from Gettysburg College. Guelzo’s accomplishments are impressive, contributing to the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, US News and World Report, the National Review, and other notable publications in addition to writing several acclaimed historical books. The approach that Guelzo uses in the course is to talk about this period through the eyes of several “founding fathers”. In the introduction he talks about his criteria for inclusion in this exclusive list of people from that period in our history. His list includes lots of people you will readily remember like Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson but also some that are not as familiar like Thomas Mifflin and William Findley.

One would think that our first president would make the list. But he did not. Oh, George Washington is on his list but not our first President. George Washington was our first president under our present constitution. Our first “President” under the Articles of Confederation was a guy by the name of John Hanson. He took over right after the Revolutionary War. He served in the Congress from Maryland and he was apparently so popular that he was unanimously elected by his colleagues. Actually, there were six “Presidents” before Washington, most of whom you probably haven’t heard of. A notable exception to that statement was that John Hancock served a one-year term.

I have read a lot about Washington. So much has been written. But it is concluded by all that Washington was in many ways a modest man and certainly not a “power-grabber” as many in that time were, and I guess as many are today. In fact, in 1783 Washington appeared before Congress and President Hanson and personally submitted his resignation as the leader of American armed forces. He was so universally revered that he probably could have just appointed himself king and Americans would have been happy. But his intent was to quietly return to his beloved Virginia and live out his life in peace and happiness there. So, what happened to reengage him and what in the world would motivate the Father of our Country to issue the pessimistic pronouncement cited above?

Well, it seems after the euphoria of the British surrender at Yorktown and the establishment of the Articles of Confederation, things were going a little sideways. Washington was not the only one who was alarmed. When Benjamin Franklin came home from a stint representing the country to the French monarchy, he was shocked at what had been taking place with the state assemblies and particularly the assembly of his own state, Pennsylvania. The Articles left nearly all meaningful power with the states and they were exercising it in ways that no one would have foreseen. More on that later, but Franklin was also dismayed at American newspapers (a couple of which he had created). He said they were “affronting, calumniating, and defaming one another”. I didn’t know exactly what that second thing was, but I was sure it wasn’t good. I had to look it up. It means that they were making false and derogatory comments about each other. Franklin was particularly alarmed that Pennsylvania had basically pitched his old buddy Robert Morris out of the Assembly, almost accusing him of not being a patriot. This was pretty ironic since Morris had personally provided over one million pounds of his own money to the tottering government. Morris had also been invaluable in his assistance to Franklin in getting foreign loans for our fledgling country. Morris was regarded by most as being our first government finance expert and had many common-sense ideas for how American commerce and banking should be handled. Those ideas were summarily rejected.

How bad was it?

• With our independence from Great Britain and their economic restraints, Americans went on a binge of consumption and speculation.
• With a lack of hard currency Americans found themselves unable to repay the loans that they had racked up with English banks. These defaults in turn brought down no less than five of Great Britain’s largest banks. It didn’t take too long for the remaining ones to turn off the credit to the “colonists”.
• American merchants were in turn unable to buy any goods to sell and closed their doors.
• With the collapse of credit, land values fell, and mortgages went into default.
• With no ability to tax, the national government was unable to pay off its sizable war debt, which in turn soured other European government from extending further credit.
• The assemblymen from no less than seven states knew the way out of the problem – they would just print up some money and pass a law that it was “legal tender” and had to be honored for the repayment of debt – in their state. They also enacted laws that prevented lenders and sellers from collecting debts in any other way. This of course led to wild inflation and the complete collapse of capital borrowing.
• The Brits, understandably upset that the colonists were defaulting on their debts, threatened to NOT honor the peace treaty of 1783 and they specifically began to take steps to retake the forts in the West.
• American soldiers who had not been paid were so angry that a Pennsylvania regiment marched to Philadelphia and surrounded the statehouse where Congress was meeting and threatened the congressmen for their pay. (Congress quickly adjourned and wisely determined to next meet – in Princeton, New Jersey a perhaps safer environment.)
• But what worried Franklin and Washington most was described in a Boston newspaper. America now had developed a “private, selfish, and basely avaricious spirit …. in the room of public virtue”.

Well, we all know that cooler heads prevailed, a new constitution was adopted giving the federal government more power, Washington reluctantly agreed to become our “second-first-president” and we began to work our way out of the predicament. But Washington’s words seem hauntingly prescient to me in 2021-America. I wonder sometimes if we really CAN govern ourselves. In America we say that the PEOPLE are sovereign. But that is not the “Sovereign” that Washington was thinking about. He was thinking about a singular strongman, in his case King George. In other words, he questioned whether we, acting on our own, have the common sense and the common decency to take care of each other and to work for the common good. What do these words mean in today’s America? That is the real issue in our country today. It is a bit presumptuous for anyone to say they really know what acting in the common good is. But I think I know a few things that are NOT in the common good:

• Attacking the seat of our federal representative government – Congress – while our duly elected representatives are carrying out a duty prescribed for them in our Constitution;
• Using social media, to propagate the most outlandish and unsubstantiated rumors, misleading and inciting people to act against their own interest and the interests of others;
• Unendingly refusing to accept an election result that by all unbiased sources was determined to be the most fairly conducted in our history;
• Calumniating each other through biased and slanted usage of all the forms of media under the guise of “reporting the news” – think FOX News, the Huffington Post, CNBC, OAN etc.;
• Establishing economic systems, through taxation and other provisions, that provide for unheard of disparities between the haves and the have-nots;
• EXPECTING and DEMANDING that government be the answer to all problems of every individual, even when those problems are self-inflicted;
• Denying citizens of REAL equal protection under the law because of their race;
• Justifying police racial profiling and cultures of violence towards minorities in our police departments;
• Using wrongs by others (including our police) to justify lawlessness and destruction of public and private property;
• Making it more difficult for poor and minority group Americans to exercise their constitutionally guaranteed right to vote;
• Taking the greatest threat to public health that we have experienced in one hundred years and making it a matter of political debate.

There are others but the big question is why do we do these things? Can we really govern ourselves? We are certainly not realistically threatened by any foreign power. The threat is US. My nephew, a young man with wisdom beyond his years, forwarded a summary of a presentation that he recently heard detailing how much division and animosity there is in our country today. It was presented by Doug Sosnik, a senior policy advisor for the multi-national Brunswick company. I can’t recite all the information in this thought-provoking piece but if you get a chance, I recommend that you review it. I can forward a link if any of you are interested. He makes the point that our country is nearing a real inflection point. Things are dramatically changing and are going to be changing more over the coming years, and maybe not for the better. I was particularly struck by the main point of his summary of politics in the country.

The unifying force in American politics today is the opposition to the other political party. Democrats are out to trample and demonize former President Trump and his followers and Republicans aspire to “own the Libs”. Public policy takes a back seat to these more visceral goals – party positions can actually be reversed depending on what the other party favors. And internally among party activists, the competition is for which candidate will more aggressively, even outrageously, pursue this goal. Incumbent Republicans are more likely to lose a primary from the right – and incumbent Democrats are more likely to lose a primary from the left – than to be defeated in a general election in most districts. Compromise is not a dirty word; it isn’t a word at all.

I used to think that it was only a matter of time before democracy and self-governance would be the system for all countries. But look around – Hong Kong, Russia, North Korea, Myanmar, India, Brazil, Syria – we are going in the opposite direction towards authoritarian rule, coercion of a Sovereign. America is the world’s last beacon of hope for a system that provides for self-governance and liberty and justice for all – sovereignty of the people. But we are NOT too big to fail. In fact, I could see Franklin’s and Washington’s fears realized if we do not change the trajectory that we are on. I pray that modern day Washingtons and Franklins will step forward. But more than that, I pray that we will ALL eliminate the “private, selfish and basely avaricious spirit in the room of public virtue”. And that we will ALL eschew the politics of division, excess and hate. We did it in 1789, I pray that we can do it again.

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived, and dishonest — but the myth — persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.

— John Kennedy, 1917-1963, American President [1961-1963]

The eighties and nineties were kind of a blur to me. My life was consumed with raising kids and working. There was not a lot of time devoted to television. That may explain why I now find myself terribly amused by some of the shows that I didn’t watch then. My latest favorite is “Third Rock from the Sun”. The pretext for this series involves four aliens from outer space who are on a mission to learn about earth and its inhabitants. The main character, Dick Solomon, is played by John Lithgow, an amazing actor. I think the show is hilarious and sometimes insightful. Today’s rerun episode theme was truth. Dick and his cohorts are incapable of lying. They struggle to understand why humans create so many problems for themselves by not telling the truth and by not being able to discern fact from falsehood.

My thoughts immediately drifted to the high level of untruths that permeate our discussions these days. Or at least much of what is being bantered about seems like untruths to ME at least. There is now talk about “alternative facts”. Isn’t this an oxymoron? If something is a fact, the opposite of that is NOT a fact, umm isn’t it? This is such a target-rich environment, which lie to focus on? Well of course there is the “Big Lie” about the election results. That has created so much discord and destruction. And then there is the whole QAnon fiasco. But I think I will skip these for now in favor of the lies being told this week about the Texas power outage.

Do you ever get a little tired about hearing about Texas? Don’t mess with Texas!! Austin is the fastest growing, successful high-tech community in America. Everyone is leaving California and moving to Texas. Texas is bigger and better than X number of other states combined. The Dallas Cowboys – America’s Team! Texas is so big you can’t drive across it in one day. Blah, blah, blah, blah! Two years ago, I was walking through the MINNESOTA state fair and saw this exhibit extolling all of the virtues of Texas. Give me a break!! Now let me begin with sympathy to all who have experienced loss in the tragedy of the winter storm. I would never wish this disaster on anyone, especially fellow Americans. But I must confess to some guilty schadenfreude for the public officials there – Texas is not so bulletproof either. I know it is always wrong to gloat when others have problems, but it was so hard for me to resist:

• Last fall Texas Senator Ted Cruz hooted when California governor Gavin Newsome had to ask its residents to turn down their air conditioners because of the energy issues created by wildfires. In an August 19, 2020 Tweet he said “California is now unable to perform even basic functions of civilization, like having reliable electricity. Biden/Harris/AOC want to make CA’s failed energy policy the standard nationwide. Hope you don’t like air conditioning!”
• Texas OPTED OUT of regional energy planning/sharing consortia, instead relying on their OWN planning. (Don’t mess with Texas.) There were a few exceptions on the fringes of the state who had participated in joint energy grid planning and these areas went through the recent weather event relatively unscathed. There are three grids in the Lower 48 states: The Eastern Interconnection, the Western Interconnection — and Texas. The Texas grid is called ERCOT, and it is run by an agency of the same name — the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. ERCOT commissioners are now taking flak from Texas politicians who are pointing the fingers at others and fleeing this debacle with reckless abandon!! Why did Texas want to go it alone? Because then they were not under the jurisdiction of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Don’t mess with Texas!
• FERC visited Texas on at least three occasions in the last thirty years after similar weather problems (in an advisory role) and recommended more weatherization of the state’s energy facilities. These recommendations were summarily ignored, because, because umm I guess Texas knows best. And amazingly former Governor Perry said last week that the disaster was worth it, to keep FERC out of the lives of Texans. “Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business.” I’m not so sure that those Texans who have lost loved ones or even the ones getting $8,000 monthly electric bills would really say that.
• Texas Representative Kyle Biedermann has prepared a bill that would begin the process of secession for Texas. Texas GOP Chairman Allen West has publicly endorsed this legislation to allow for a referendum. They even have a cute name for it – Texit.

So, in the face of all this mismanagement by MANY in the state, the present Governor of Texas knows where the blame lies – it is the failing WIND ENERGY facilities in the state. According to Newsweek, Texas Governor Greg Abbott has blamed the disaster on green energy and criticized the proposed Green New Deal. “This shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America,” Abbott said, claiming that wind and solar energy make up “collectively more than 10 percent of our power grid.” “It just shows that fossil fuel is necessary for the state of Texas as well as other states to make sure we’ll be able to heat our homes in the wintertime and cool our homes in the summertime.” I don’t think anyone is saying that we will never need natural gas again.

And then there is this: The aforementioned Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which oversees most of the state’s electrical grid, has placed the blame for the outages on Texas’ reliance on natural gas. Dan Woodfin, a senior director at ERCOT, told The Texas Tribune that more than half of their winter generating capacity is offline and that much of this is powered by natural gas. “It appears that a lot of the generation that has gone offline today has been primarily due to issues on the natural gas system,” Woodfin said. It is estimated that 80 percent of the Texas electricity grid’s capacity may be generated by natural gas, coal, and nuclear power. Just 7 percent of its winter capacity was due to come from wind. Or as Michael Webber, an energy resources professor at the University of Texas at Austin, told The Texas Tribune: “Texas is a gas state. Gas is failing in the most spectacular fashion right now.” Let’s call a spade a spade – this debacle lies clearly at the feet of those officials who allowed energy generators in Texas to sidestep widely recommended winterization work, commonplace in areas all over the US, in the interest of HIGHER UTILITY PROFITS.

Despite the secessionist leanings by some in the state, when Governor Abbott requested assistance from Washington, President Biden responded that the US Government will do all that it can to alleviate this exceedingly difficult situation – and I might add, AS IT SHOULD. The US government is funded by taxpayers from ALL the fifty states, including those who are not considering secession. FEMA will spring into action bringing generators and other things to help, just as they did for Houston and other devasted areas of Texas in 2017 in Hurricane Harvey and in many other flood events. But again, the chippy side of me remembers that Houston is well known for its lax to non-existent land use controls. Amazingly even today, the nation’s fourth largest city has no zoning ordinance, instead relying on a convoluted system involving some general overall development standards and the legal ability of the city to enforce private deed restrictions. This lack of urban planning has created difficulties when it comes to efficiently providing public services most notably drainage and flood control. So, don’t tell Houston how to run their city, and don’t tell Texas how to run their power grid – Don’t mess with Texas you Yankee jerks. Just send on down the money when we get into trouble. Oops, I slipped again.

“The days of wine and roses laugh and run away like a child at play
Through the meadow land toward a closing door
A door marked “nevermore” that wasn’t there before”

From the Song “The Days of Wine and Roses” – Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini

When I started with the Commonwealth of Commonsense, I was enthused about writing down the thoughts that were rattling around in my head. I even explained that enthusiasm in my first post. I did have a concern that I might reach a point where writing with frequency would no longer be fun and become a burden. But I thought that I would have something at least every couple of weeks that would be worth saying. But as you can observe the fount of my wisdom has flowed far less frequently as time has gone on. I didn’t really see this coming, but I often just do not feel that I have anything to say.

There are a lot of things that I did not see coming. This growing old thing is different than I thought it would be. I have talked before about how we were taught that we were nothing special. We just needed to keep our heads down, work hard, do the right thing and to not get an inflated ego. And if you ask me today, I will still tell you that I am just an average kind of guy, not too strong, not too smart, not too rich, not too successful. But as life goes on, it is becoming more and more clear to me that I have been deluding myself a little bit. Beneath a couple veneered layers of modesty, I really do think that the problems that others experience won’t affect me. And I am kind of surprised when they do!!

I certainly didn’t see this health stuff coming. Through most of my “days of wine and roses” I pretty much thought I was bullet proof. Oh, I had a couple little blips, knee surgery, gall bladder surgery, you know the kind of stuff that you get taken care of and then move on as if nothing ever happened. They were certainly nothing that ever slowed me down from pursuing absolutely anything that I wanted to do. I never missed work and I was always the one that would be in the harness no matter what.

The health issues that I have now are a different kind of thing. Now I have atrial fibrillation and bradycardia. I have one functioning kidney and am prone to kidney stones. Those are not things where you go in for a same-day surgery, get fixed and then forget about them. These are things that will afflict me for the rest of my life, however long that is. And unlike an arthroscopic knee procedure these things DO curtail what I can do- significantly. Like everyone, I certainly knew on a certain level, that I would grow old and that my capabilities would decrease. But as they say, knowing it in your head and knowing it in your heart are two different things. As I walk thorough the meadow land of old age, I am finding several “doors marked nevermore” now that weren’t there before.

Geez, now I am getting depressed. But wait, some of those doors are actually not all bad. Here is an example. When I was a kid, our family visited my Grandpa’s house on Saturday evening. I don’t mean occasionally; I mean EVERY Saturday night. When Christmas Eve was on Saturday evening it felt strange to be in church instead of at Grandpa’s house. And the routine was kind of the same each week. The Moms were in the kitchen talking about Mom kinds of stuff and the Dads and Grandpa were in the living room talking about “important” things – social, economic, and political realities. Before 8:30 PM the conversation was in English but later in the evening or whenever the discussion veered into areas unsuitable for children, the dialogue transitioned directly into German. These discussions often grew pretty heated, most often pitting my Uncle George against my Dad and my Uncle Louis. My Grandpa was at least to our minds, strangely quiet. He sat off to the side in his favorite rocker taking it all in. If queried, he would respond but he felt no need to assert his point of view and seemed to me to be more intent on listening to what other people said. I have observed this with many elderly people. They no longer feel the need to advocate and they really do not care if people think they should. I count this freedom as a blessing.

I have walked through another door. It is called the door of “being-satisfied-with-what-we-have”. This is NOT the door of wealth or even the door of economic well-being. When we are young, we are driven to acquire. Some are not simply driven by the need to acquire, but instead by the need to acquire MORE AND MORE. This rarely ends well. Others of us reach a point where we realize that we will not want to be on the “milk train” for ever and that there will come a point where we might not actually WANT that next promotion and would prefer to give work a much smaller portion of our life. The best financial thing about retirement is that you no longer have to save for retirement. We are far from wealthy, but we are satisfied with what we have and actually would prefer that we have less “stuff”. I realize that no matter what, we will not be multi-millionaires and I have become simply fine with that.

Here is another “door nevermore” that I am fine with. One day our daughter Libby and I were driving down the street, probably heading for some sports thing somewhere, maybe just on an errand. She was in 4th or 5th grade. In any event Libby had reached the point in her life where she was thinking about important issues. Right out of nowhere she asked me about abortion. I explained to her as best I could what was involved. She asked why there was so much disagreement about it. I said that there were multiple points of view and a lot of things to consider. Libby’s eyes have always mesmerized me from the day they handed her to me in the delivery room. She looked at me with those beguiling eyes and said: “But what do WE BELIEVE Dad?” I felt the weight of the world descending on my shoulders. Libby was certain that I was wise, that I had the CORRECT answer about any question and she was totally ready to accept it. (Thankfully, she has now realized how far from truth that was!!!) I no longer bear that burden. I am totally fine with saying; “That is a very difficult question, and I am not certain that I know the right answer”.

So, I am learning to be satisfied, wandering around the meadow land of aging. There are certainly a lot of things I did not anticipate and do not fully understand. It is a lot different than I thought, but not all bad. So, if you thought there would be more thoughts from the Commonwealth of Common Sense, well so did I. But I am fine being like my Grandpa, listening a lot and occasionally talking.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Let your heart be light
Next year all our troubles will be out of sight
Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Make the yuletide gay
Next year all our troubles will be miles away

Once again as in olden days
Happy golden days of yore
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Will be near to us once more

Someday soon we all will be together
If the fates allow
Until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow
So have yourself a merry little Christmas now

From the Song “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane

My Mother was rarely sentimental as we grew up. With five boys and one girl I suppose there was really no time for it! Her days were filled with the more mundane things – feeding a hungry family of eight, keeping our busy farmhouse clean, working in our monstrous garden, and doing the mountain of laundry that always seemed to be accumulating. Laundry alone consumed one entire workday each week. We were in no way deprived growing up on the farm even though I guess by any American standard we were poor. But because of my Dad’s industrious ways and my Mom’s hard work we really didn’t know it.

So, it is memorable to me that one Christmas carol would bring tears to her eyes each time she heard it – “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” sung by Judy Garland. My Mother was especially close to her brother Les – the namesake of MY oldest brother. They were closest in age in her very large family. So, she was filled with such pride and such fear when he marched off with Patton’s army in World War II. He served as a medical corpsman in North Africa and Italy and then waited in England where they served as a decoy to the Germans in preparation for D-Day. He was not part of that invasion but came to the European Theater later with Patton and fought in the Battle of the Bulge and numerous other engagements. As with most veterans from The Greatest Generation he did not talk a lot about his experiences in the war. But he witnessed horrific things. When he enlisted in 1941, he wrote to my Mother that he expected that it would all be over in four or five months. As time went by, he thought it might take a year. He came home in October of 1945 – FOUR YEARS LATER!

I think we really fail to properly understand how things were on the home front in those dark days. For a long time at the beginning of the war, there wasn’t a lot of good news. It was not assumed that the Allies would prevail. And even if we did, every family worried about what THE PERSONAL cost of that victory would be for them. Would their loved ones come home? And we all know that hundreds of thousands of our troops did NOT come home. When Judy Garland recorded this song in 1943, my Mother was not at all certain when or even if she would celebrate Christmas with her brother again. So, she had to cling to the phrase – “through the years we all will be together if the fates allow, until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow”. She “muddled through” and she was blessed, Uncle Les DID come home safely.

So, what is my point? This Christmas will be difficult for most of us, or at least strange and so different from our traditions. Jan and I will not gather with our family as we always do. We won’t be in church on Christmas Eve, substituting a video or a parking lot candle-light service. It makes me sad and a little emotional. But then I think of the profound sadness and worry that my Mother and all those families caught up in the maelstrom of war felt. How did they muddle through? And then I think of the hundreds of thousands of families who have lost loved ones to COVID 19, many in our church and among our acquaintances. How will THEY muddle through? I feel pretty silly to be sad at how we are NOT going to celebrate Christmas. Clearly, we WILL muddle through this all somehow. And we will be together again soon. Why am I so sure of that? I think that it has to do with hope. This is after all, the season of hope.

Well, truthfully there are lots of reasons to NOT be hopeful. There has been so much death this year and so many people grieving. The economy is in tatters. There is a reported NEW strain of the virus with unknown potential for hurting us. Climate change is real, and I believe it to be an existential threat. We just went through a bitterly fought election that is STILL not resolved in the minds of many. We are more divided than we have ever been. The gap between the haves and the have-nots is ever widening. Things are kind of a mess. We truly ARE unfit stewards for this world that God has left us in.

But there is the key to our hope. There is a Higher Power. God is still on his throne. We are especially mindful at this time of year that He will spare no cost to take care of us. After all, He sent a part of himself, his only Son on a rescue mission that cost more than we can really even understand. So that is why I believe that things ARE going to be better. We should not despair. Or to quote the other Christmas carol that makes ME a little misty eyed – “The wrong shall fail, the right prevail, with peace on earth and good will to men.”

May this find you hopeful, healthy, and happy and may you have a Very Merry Christmas and a Joyous Happy New Year.

You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometimes, well, you just might find
You get what you need

From the Song “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” – Keith Richards and Mick Jagger

You may or may not have noticed that there have been very few pearls of wisdom from the Commonwealth of Common Sense lately. I tried a couple of times during the election season to write, but it just would not come. I suppose it could be that “writer’s block” that I sometimes hear about. But I think there was more. I kept coming back to the word “common” in the name of the blog. I just really started to question if what I thought made sense was in any meaningful way “in common” with other people. Oh, you can always find SOMEBODY who will agree with you, I guess. But I really became convinced that there is a significant part of our population that I really do not understand.

Now, before you go off telling me that I am just another one of those urban, elitist, over-politically-correct, socialistic Biden-supporting snobs let me hasten to add, I am not even trying to say that my understanding, my world view, is the right one. It is true that I voted for Joe Biden for president, but I am totally ready to admit that I don’t have the corner on truth. It just troubled me that I was so out of step with over 70,000,000 of my fellow Americans. That’s right, seventy MILLION people voted for Donald Trump compared to only about five million more who voted for Joe Biden. Maybe that is always the way elections turn out. There is never going to be a winner that is that far ahead of his or her election opponent.

But the numbers sort of intimidated me a little bit. How could what I think be so far away from what so MANY of my friends and neighbors think. It scared me to wonder what I DO have in common with this huge group of people. And the separation is a HARD separation. There seems to be very little inclination from either side to try to find middle ground. That would be compromise, a concept that is reviled by both sides.

As we totter in the no-man’s-land of the period between the election and the inauguration, I was very much ill at ease. I was sure that one or the other would be president. It certainly seemed like Biden was the clear-cut winner based on the election data that I had seen. But the troubling thing was that whatever way it turned out, half of the country would be outraged. Trump supporters would say that the election was stolen from him by corrupt election officials. I will say more on corrupt election officials later. If the Trump campaign convinced several state courts that for whatever reason their results could not be certified and HE prevailed there would be howls of complaint, demonstrations etc. etc. from Biden supporters. I sort of felt that there could be no real winner is this mess.

So, for the first time in a long time I must say that I was NOT optimistic about the future of our country. I felt that we would be headed for something much closer to an autocracy if President Trump were to sit for another four years (or more – he has talked about attempting to extend his stay to a THIRD term). I feared what he would do. But if Biden were elected, I thought that there would be four years of contested actions and gridlock with Republican resistance at every turn, but MORE IMPORTANTLY that seventy million people would have no confidence in their president. Republicans can argue that this is exactly what happened to Trump when he was elected. I think this is a little different in that during the first two years of Trump’s term he had a Republican House and a Republican Senate. Adding it all up I determined to let the “Commonwealth of Common Sense” ride into the sunset, to close the site and cocoon.

And then as if God-sent (maybe it was), I read the recent editorial by D. J. Tice from the Strib. For those of you who haven’t read his work, Tice is a conservative voice in a mostly liberal newspaper. I read his writing faithfully, but I must tell you that while I most often agree with or at least understand what he says, what he writes often irritates me. I guess maybe he is making me think of things in a different way. This time Tice helped me to believe that maybe I am NOT so in-step with some of the 75 million who voted for Biden and maybe NOT so far out-of-step with many of the 70 million who voted for Trump. I won’t replay the whole article but the following excerpts I think are the most important to understanding what just happened in our country.

While the bragging, trash-talking, semiliterate tough guy shtick obviously has an enthusiastic core audience, many other Americans among Trump’s 70 million voters merely put up with his barbarisms, and only with some difficulty.
What they’re enthusiastic about is Trump as a living, snarling repudiation to America’s smug, know-it-all professional, managerial, academic, bureaucratic urban elite — those self-anointed sophisticates who disdain, as much as anything, Trump’s unembarrassed declarations of love for America and respect for everyday, working-class Americans, with their admiration for their nation’s history, ideals and traditional culture.
Many millions, in short, dislike much about Trump, but dislike even more about his enemies.

And then further:

The reality is that this week’s apparent result is exactly the outcome the nation needed — but did not seem likely to get. It’s the kind of moderate, difference-splitting division of power that frustrates radicals of all stripes and demands — egad — compromise for government to get anything done.
Given the proud peacocks who presume to govern us, gridlock is often underrated. Voters last week contrived to at once reject Donald Trump while also humbling and hobbling those delirious with hatred of Trump and drunk with admiration of their own virtue.
America needed to jettison this president — his coarseness, his cruelty, his dishonesty, his addiction to strife. But it needed to do it without endorsing and empowering the leftist fanaticism that threatens to stampede a weary Joe Biden into unaffordable expansions of government largesse and power, and imprudent remodelings of constitutional structures. The results seem likely to both require and reinforce Biden’s moderate impulses.

Before concluding, a word about election fraud – as many of you know I spent more than half of my career working for cities. Cities and townships are the first and I would argue the most important layers in the election process. I will give personal testimony that in all of those years I NEVER EVEN ONCE came across anything that was one iota short of total compliance with the legal requirements of impartiality. I can’t recite all the regulations governing elections in our state – the statutes are hundreds of pages long. But I would talk about just one – the appointment of election judges. Local governments are REQUIRED to have equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans serving as election judges in every precinct. I find that MOST people either don’t know that or more probably haven’t even thought about it. These faithful volunteers are required to have hours and hours of training where the impartiality and accuracy themes are pounded over and over. And they get to watch each other doing their jobs – that is the intent.

The idea that people from this group of civic minded people would conspire, in hundreds of thousands of precincts across the country in some controlled way to throw an election one way or another is unfathomable to me. There has been discussion of the absentee voting process. These votes are counted under the SAME regulations as regular voting. Now, when 150,000,000 votes are cast, there are going to be some weird situations. Handling of these weird situations can certainly be scrutinized. But in the overall scheme of things they are infinitesimal and the likelihood of them deciding an outcome is similarly infinitesimal. Trying to use these extremely rare abnormalities to question the overall validity of an election, implying that the process is fatally flawed to me is inexcusable and attacks the very foundation of our country.

SOOOOOO, the Commonwealth is NOT dissolving. My perspective is corrected. I think Tice is right, the election probably turned out the way that is best for the country. The fractious elements of our elected officials are going to HAVE to find a way to get along and to get things done. As I have said in the past, call me a cock-eyed optimist, but I think they will.

“Blessed are the peacekeepers, for they shall be called the children of God.”

Jesus in Matthew 5:9

A couple of years ago Jan and I took some of the kids on a European vacation. We spent three days in London. Its safe to say that if we were not “Anglophiles” before, we certainly were after our visit. We were fascinated by the history and culture. One of the things that we found most interesting was the police presence. We had one isolated incident where we saw policemen with weapons but nearly everywhere the “bobbies” were unarmed, and I might add disarming. Despite the crush of tourists milling about most were very personable and happy to talk with us. A recent editorial in the Minneapolis Star Tribune posted by Melvin W. Carter Jr. reminded me about the bobbies. If you haven’t read that piece it really is worth a review. Carter (who is the father of the present Mayor of St. Paul) was a St. Paul cop for twenty-eight years. I thought what he said was so “right-on” it was worth talking about.

Some history on bobbies and British policing – Sir Robert Peel was a British Conservative statesman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom as well as its Home Secretary in the early to mid-1800’s. He is regarded as the father of modern British policing, owing to his founding of the Metropolitan Police Service. Tradition says that he was the original author of the “Principles of Policing”. Thus, the Metro policemen came to be called “bobbies” or “peelies”. I have seen several versions of the Principles with some versions listing nine and some up to twelve. But the following is the generally accepted version:

PRINCIPLE 1 “The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.”
PRINCIPLE 2 “The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon public approval of police actions.”
PRINCIPLE 3 “Police must secure the willing cooperation of the public in voluntary observance of the law to be able to secure and maintain the respect of the public.”
PRINCIPLE 4 “The degree of cooperation of the public that can be secured diminishes proportionately to the necessity of the use of physical force.”
PRINCIPLE 5 “Police seek and preserve public favor not by catering to the public opinion but by constantly demonstrating absolute impartial service to the law.”
PRINCIPLE 6 “Police use physical force to the extent necessary to secure observance of the law or to restore order only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient.”
PRINCIPLE 7 “Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.”
PRINCIPLE 8 “Police should always direct their action strictly towards their functions and never appear to usurp the powers of the judiciary.”
PRINCIPLE 9 “The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it.”

These principles form the basis of what many now refer to as Community Oriented Policing. I would think that most of us would say a hardy “Amen” to these Principles. At least I certainly would. But I think especially given the disorder of the last months we would also sadly note how far away some police departments are from fully embracing them. Why is that?

My brother is a career cop. I love hearing stories about his work (when he is willing to share them). Sometimes they are hilarious and sometimes so, so sad. I spent more than half of my career working for cities where I had ample opportunities to work with police departments. Heck, the last ten years of my career the Chief of Police even reported to me (at least in principal on the org chart)! A background like that can lead you to think you know more about policing than you really do. In my more lucid moments, I realize that I am NOT a cop and never have been. This is mostly theoretical for me. It occurred to me that maybe after spewing out my uninformed opinions I should have some REAL cops tell me what they thought of them. So, I called on three cops that I know, love and respect. Here are a few of their points.

• Police work is incredibly difficult. It is burdened with achieving a myriad of different goals all at once. I was reminded that policing is a “Service Industry”. We expect our cops to be friendly and professional in what can be VERY unfriendly and chaotic situations. My brother reminds me that cops deal with people, even the best of us, at our worst moments. But we demand that cops be friendly, kind and professional all day, every day. At the same time there is this “honor” burden that they carry around, or as one chief put it – they must NOT tarnish the badge.
• Police work is dangerous. One of my friends told me that in addition to everything else they had to think about, he charged his people with the responsibility to go home every night to their loved ones – they had to be reminded that they have a responsibility to preserve their own lives. My brother has been injured in altercations with uncooperative citizens. He was at risk many times, probably more times than he would even want his family to know. His story is probably very similar to what every cop has experienced. I can attest to the fact that police work extremely hard to keep themselves AND the citizens that they serve safe – this includes those that they arrest. I have heard them talk about how having adequate force in place when dealing with difficult situations is necessary for everyone’s safety. Unfortunately, adequate force is NOT always in place, in fact adequate force is probably more often lacking than it is in place. Or as one cop put it, community policing is a very fine concept, but it is difficult to remember it when “wrestling a drunk who takes a poke at you” especially when you are all by yourself.
• It is so easy for cops to feel isolated. As I said I believe I have a more-than-average familiarity with what is involved with police work. But many cops feel that NOBODY other than other cops really know what they go through. That is probably because when they are wrestling that drunk and need help, another cop is the only one who is going to help them. And that same abusive drunkard may well accuse the cop of using unnecessary force when it all said and done. And then, amidst all that stress, we demand that cops tell the truth – 100% of the truth.

What can be done to make this difficult task more doable? If Peel’s ideals are to be achieved what needs to happen in our world? Here are a few items, I am sure there are more.
• We cannot underfund this effort. The cries to “defund” the police are so counterproductive. If anything, they need MORE funding. They need to minimize the number of times when cops are exposed to situations without adequate resources.
• We need to make certain that we can attract good qualified candidates for policing. Policing is a service industry that must compete with OTHER service industries for the best and the brightest. Yes, this will cost more money.
• We need to make adequate resources available for training. One of my friends ALSO marvels at the demeanor exhibited by the bobbies. How do they do that? He attributes that to a couple of factors one of which is training. Many departments are including training that recognizes that they will be placed in situations where they will be harassed and under pressure. We must not only equip our cops with adequate physical tools but also with adequate training to successfully use those tools.
• We need to make adequate resources available for recruitment. From my peripheral-police background, I can tell you that finding good candidates is exceedingly difficult. Still that recruitment process must be rigorous and include extensive psychological testing. One of my friends confessed that he was not an early adaptor of the importance of this part of the recruiting process. But he came to see it as indispensable as time went on.

But MORE is needed. A wise man once told me that when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. We have tended to address the task of preserving the peace, by adding more and more law enforcement personnel and more and more sophisticated enforcement tools. The amount of military grade equipment utilized in police work these days is alarming to many. What if we really addressed some of the root causes of the disruption of the peace and funded these, ALONG with funding enforcement, to prevent crime and disorder? You know, bring a few more tools to the job. Here are a couple of things to start with:

• Poverty – I have said before that we have far too many people in our society who are so financially down-trodden they feel they have nothing to lose. And they do not see any possible road for them to escape their situation. Minimum wage increases are part of the solution there. But the real key here is education and training. We are wasting the skills and talents of millions of people simply because they cannot acquire the skills that they need to be productive members of our society and to reap the rewards that go with that status. We must adequately fund Pre-K, elementary, secondary AND post-secondary education FOR EVERYONE.
• Housing – While people are on the road to escaping poverty (this doesn’t happen overnight) they need to have a SAFE roof over their head. And yes, I mean this might need to include PROPERLY OPERATED public housing and other publicly funded efforts to assist working-class housing.
• Mental Health – Ask any first line police officer how many of their problems revolve around people with mental health issues. I think they will tell you that this is a SIGNIFICANT problem for them. When did we come to expect that the police department is the best tool to address this societal problem? We have steadily reduced resources for the mentally ill over decades and have main-streamed far too many ill people with little or no resources to help them. Our police departments “inherit” the issues that go with this neglect simply because THERE IS NO ONE ELSE left. After arresting these often-times volatile people, far too often our cops have NO PLACE FOR THEM TO GO, except to jail. How does that help ANYONE?

It is high time that we recognize that our police departments cannot keep the peace by themselves. We need to recognize that keeping the peace is a job that requires MANY types of efforts, ONLY ONE OF WHICH is law enforcement. Despite the scathing criticism that has fallen to some of our police departments, I believe that there is near universal support for keeping the peace. Why not recognize that the strengthening of our social fabric through efforts like those noted above is a part of that job? I do not see how it can work if we don’t. We can’t ever hire enough cops. We must address policing in the context of all our societal needs. As noted above, cops are not mental health professionals. They are not housing experts / housing providers. They are not educators. All these needs must be addressed ALONG with a fully functional, adequately funded and trained police force. THEN maybe we have a chance to reach Bobbie’s principles.

“There are downsides to everything; there are unintended consequences to everything.”

Steve Jobs

Yesterday, President Trump signed several Executive Orders and issued several Presidential Memoranda. The president’s four actions would extend unemployment benefits, provide a payroll tax holiday, defer student loan payments through 2020 and extend the federal moratorium on evictions. The effect of the payroll tax holiday action was to “defer” certain payroll taxes, if I understand correctly those covered by 26 U.S.C. 3101(a). I don’t mind putting in the qualifier about my understanding because as of this writing there is a lot of head-scratching going on as to if he is empowered to do any of this, whether or not there will be court challenges, how would it all be implemented etc. etc.

When I first heard this I thought: Well if Congress can’t get past their partisan gridlock to do something in these difficult times, maybe the President DOES have to “grab the bull by the horns” as they say. And if as he says that failure by Congress was all related to those intransigent spend-thrift Democrats, a pock on their house. Don’t we all want to hear about taxes being reduced? But I did a little more thinking about it and read some of what the President has pledged if he is re-elected and I am concerned, yes, even alarmed. By the way, I am NOT taking sides on which of our polarized parties in Congress screwed this up. I am sure there is probably plenty of blame to go around on that.

But getting back to the reduced tax part of all this, I started to think back about the times in my checkered past when my part of the payroll process was to be the PAYER not just the RECIEVER. And by the way those were not all pleasant memories. There were many occasions when I was the LAST one paid on pay day and many times when I WASN’T paid on pay day!! That wasn’t all bad in retrospect, it gave me a healthy respect for what employers contend with. For those of you who have NOT had the privilege of being responsible for payroll, or more likely just haven’t thought about it, there are generally four kinds of “payroll taxes” that are paid at least in Minnesota.

• Social Security or I guess more officially, Old Age Survivor and Disability Insurance (OASDI) payable under the Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA). This amount is with some exceptions, 6.2% of gross pay withheld from the employees check and a match paid by the employer of 6.2%.
• Medicare, also payable under FICA, a withholding of 1.45% from employees and a match from the employer of the same amount.
• Federal Unemployment Tax Act (FUTA) – This is paid by the employer only and after credits normally available its rate is 0.6%.
• State Unemployment Tax Act (SUTA) – This is paid by the employer only and the rate is determined by the state based on claims history.

Interestingly the Executive Order covers ONLY the OASDI segment. With all the flak flying around these days let me be clear. OASDI contributions by employees and employers ARE THE PRIMARY SOURCE OF FUNDING FOR SOCIAL SECURITY. Treasury Secretary Mnuchin advises that if these dollars are PERMANENTLY deferred, the President will affect a transfer from the Homeland Security budget to make up the shortfall. I sure would hate to be a payroll officer tomorrow morning because I am not sure what I would do. If they do not withhold and or set aside funds of their own to pay these deferred costs in December, what happens when they come due? Are they going to send a bill to employees for the deferred amounts or make one huge deduction on the first check in January? WOW, that doesn’t seem like it is going to go well. But setting aside the fog about this “deferment” issue, the President’s statements AFTER the signing are much more troubling to me. The President pledged that if he is re-elected, he will make the deferment PERMANENT, as in he will eliminate the funding mechanism for Social Security. Let me say that again, he pledged to eliminate the funding mechanism for Social Security. I think that is about as plain as anyone can make it. If the funding source for a program is eliminated does not that really make it impossible to have the program?

Now, I have a hard time believing that Congress is going to agree to eliminate Social Security, but then again who knows how all of that would play out? I believe that there are some in our great country who really could get by quite nicely without Social Security when they retire. Certainly President Trump could, if we are to believe he is the multi-billionaire that he professes to be. But I believe that the data shows that most retirees depend on Social Security for a significant part of their retirement budget, to say nothing of the disabled and dependent people who are also covered. This just all seems WAY TOO RADICAL to be true. But I have stopped saying that radical things cannot happen in our country. In fact, radicalism seems to be the trend these days. This concerns me greatly. Let us not gloss over the “tax cut – tax deferment” language that is being tossed around here to the point that we forget we are talking about eliminating the bedrock plank of our social safety net for the country.

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

President Ronald Reagan

I think I have written on these pages that Janice and I have a bit of a ritual on Independence Day. We usually spend part of the day with some of our children and grandchildren. We have not been to a live fireworks display for several years, opting instead to watch the Capitol Celebration on PBS. One of our other traditions is that we play patriotic music. Janice nearly always plays “God Bless the USA” by Lee Greenwood, among others. That song still makes me choke up a little bit. Since I was in college, I have always listened to the Declaration Medley by the Fifth Dimension. That song always puts my patriotism in a slightly more reflective mood. Of course, Greenwood’s chorus is “I’m Proud to be an American”. I know that I am proud, and one tends to think that everybody thinks the way that I do. (Wouldn’t it be irrational of them not to?) Imagine my chagrin when I read a recount of the latest Gallup Poll on this subject. It turns out FEWER of us are proud to be Americans. While most Americans are proud, the percentage has slipped by over twenty-nine percentage points over the last twenty years, most of that coming over the last four years. That is jolting to me. What’s up with that?

When we were in high school, we learned about the principal of Manifest Destiny. This line of thinking which first emerged in the 1800’s related to the country’s western expansion. The thinking was that it was America’s “Destiny” to encompass land from the Atlantic to the Pacific – it was God’s will. We were destined to have this land and resistance to this inexorable force was futile. Historians argue that this theory lead to unintended consequences including the expansion of slavery and the ill-treatment of Native Americans as the new settlers “appropriated” their land. But for me and many others “Manifest Destiny” sort of expanded to this feeling of invincibility and pride in America. America will always prevail. Don’t bet against America. America is the best country in the world and ALWAYS will be. Apparently not everybody is feeling this way so much these days.

I do believe, perhaps irrationally, that America IS the greatest. But I would imagine that I am going to diverge from many when I tell you how I think we got this way and whether we can stay this way. First, I do not think that it was “God’s will”. There are those who believe that because our Founding Fathers were religious men who dedicated this country to God, we will always be God’s chosen land. I mean “In God We Trust” IS on our currency, right? I just don’t think that history if we really study it, bears this out. If anything, it was the opposite – not that our Founding Fathers were antireligious – but that they steadfastly wanted to separate church and state. Many if not most of them had diverging religious views and several were at most agnostic. Remember that many of our first settlers here came to escape religious state persecution. It is also important to remember that many of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were slave owners. The union of the original thirteen colonies under the Articles of Confederation and later the Constitution of 1889 was only possible because there was a tacit agreement that the slavery “question” could not be resolved. So, everyone determined to move ahead believing that this would be resolved later. Of course, it was, at the cost of 820,000 American lives in a conflict that was an existential crisis for the country.

I also don’t believe that American’s are inherently “better” people. We are not physically, mentally, or morally superior to Europeans, Africans, or Asians. I believe we have all been created equal under God and that this equality does not stop at our borders. Americans are capable of amazing generosity, bravery and other positive qualities. But so are human beings from every other place on this planet. I’m sorry if that makes me seem Un-American. Like other human beings on the planet we are ALSO capable of great cruelty and selfishness. Actually, it is not reasonable to assume we are inherently different than others populating the earth, because more than most countries, Americans are immigrants (with the obvious exception of the Native Americans.) So, in fact we ARE German, French, Russian, Chinese Japanese, Nigerian, Egyptian, Filipino, etc. etc. I still DO believe that despite our shortcomings our government is LESS corrupt than many if not most of the governments in the world.

So how DID we get here? Perhaps because of the theory of Manifest Destiny but in any event, we found ourselves in the mid 1800’s owning a huge amount of land brimming with forests, minerals and other treasures. It is also not stressed enough that our Midwest contains rich farmland the likes and extent of which is unmatched in the world. No other place even comes close. I would argue that what we did was to take our burgeoning population, many of whom were immigrants, and allow them to diligently work harvesting and mining the vast wealth that we had in the country. This progress would NOT have been possible without the capitalist economy that we had and a government that mostly struck an appropriate balance between laissez faire and reasonable regulation.

Still I would argue that there WAS something different about Americans. Yes, we were just average Joes from other countries of the world. But we were and are a subset of those diverse populations. We were the risk takers – we set out to a largely unknown destination and fate. And we did it with optimism and a commitment to do whatever it took to succeed in this wild new land. I think that was our ace-in-the-hole. I just finished a book about the Manhattan Project – the massive program to invent and perfect the first atomic bomb. The bulk of the key scientists on the project were immigrants – people who fled or were ejected from other countries. The potent mixture of talented, motivated, hard-working risk takers fueled our remarkable ascendancy to preeminence.

But there is one more factor that I believe allowed us to flourish. That is our ability to adapt and change. It was a sometimes-grudging recognition that what may have worked in the past no longer was workable and in fact was an impediment to our continued progress. I mentioned the failure of the Founding Fathers to address the slavery issue at our formation. That failure was actually “functional” for a while. I’m sure that it was a lot more functional for slave owners than it was for slaves, but the country didn’t come apart and actually progressed in many measures – until it didn’t. What was acceptable in 1789 was no longer workable in 1860. So, in a giant cataclysm that was nearly our undoing, we changed that.

After the Civil War, the growing industrial and financial markets of the eastern United States generally prospered. But that prosperity didn’t penetrate to all parts of the economy. This led to the formation of political organizations such as the Grange, the Greenback Party, the National Farmers’ Alliance, and the People’s (Populist) Party. All of these groups advocated many reforms considered radical for the times, including a graduated income tax. After great wailing and gnashing of teeth and predictions of doom, the 16th Amendment was passed authorizing the collection of a federal income tax – unthinkable in the decades preceding it. In these same decades, “The Jungle” was written by Upton Sinclair detailing the sorry conditions prevalent in our meat packing plants and other factories. We reached a time when these conditions were no longer acceptable and despite cries that industry would be decimated, mandates for improved conditions were passed and everyone was better off for it. When Americans found that the dire state in which many senior citizens were forced to live to be unacceptable, despite cries of “Socialism”, Social Security was enacted. Similarly, when Americans found that seniors were unable to afford adequate medical services in their retirement years, again despite heated debate, Medicare was enacted.

So, what is my point? I think America has thrived because we have been willing to adapt to changing times, as necessary. This has nearly always been difficult, but we did it without blasting the country apart. I think that THIS has been what has fueled our continued progress over the decades and centuries. And I think we are perhaps reaching another inflection point. I believe that Americans no longer consider it to be “OK” to stay quiet while racial discrimination proliferates just under the surface of our culture. There are far too many events like the murder of a police suspect in our own state. Income inequality is becoming too wide. I don’t think this is going to go away. And I don’t think it SHOULD go away. Americans are no longer willing to accept the right to the pursuit of happiness in THEORY only. It needs to be real and we need for ALL of us to believe it – to believe that if we work hard, study hard, do the right thing, that we CAN have a good life in this country. All need to believe that this is possible for EVERY American regardless of their race creed or color. And that we will all have EQUAL treatment under the law, regardless of our wealth and position in society. Seems simple but I tell you we are NOT there now. What remains to be seen is if we can facilitate the changes that are necessary now, without blowing the thing up. As countries and civilizations go, we are but a youth. I do not think that it is manifest destiny that there will always be an America, and that we will always be the preeminent power on the planet. We can EASILY screw this up if we don’t make changes as they are necessary. Trying to blindly get back to the “good old days” will not work, just as it did not work in the past.

Can we do it? Call me a cock-eyed optimist but I think we can. I spent several days in the hospital last week. Of all the nurses and nursing assistants that took GREAT care of me, I would estimate that more than 75% of them were immigrants. Isla was the last person to help me. She wheeled me to the car where Janice picked me up. She is originally from Kenya. She told me about her family and how she happened to be here in Minnesota. Isla was telling me what a GREAT country America is and what a GREAT state Minnesota is. SHE is proud to be an American. Oh, that we were all as grateful to be here as she is.

“Never do business with someone who has nothing to lose.”
Wiard B. Ebeling – Country Gentleman, Wise Sage, and My Dad

I am going to tell you from the outset, this is not going to be another “I’m outraged – I’m MORE outraged than the other politicians” thing. I AM outraged at the events that have taken place, but I want to be a little more incisive than just screaming about the injustice, the murder of George Floyd. For several days last week, it just seemed that the looting and arson were going on unabated. People were asking: Why isn’t law enforcement doing something? People were enraged over these behaviors – some it seems, almost as much as the murder. And of course, when something bad happens we immediately need to blame someone. Over the weekend in some of the press conferences there was talk about this failure to keep order as being a “numbers game”. Governor Walz said that we just did not have the number of law enforcement personnel in place to deal with the number of demonstrators that they were confronting. Thus, mutual aid was summoned from other police agencies throughout the state and the National Guard was mobilized.

In watching the coverage of the horrors of the last week I heard several reporters and commentators talk about the “social contract”. I am not sure if the social contract is written anyplace but there is a tacit, maybe even explicit understanding of what it means. I heard Pat Kessler from our local WCCO television station invoke that phrase and I also heard a riveting commentary by Trevor Noah discussing the contract. (Thanks to Jon Hohenstein for pointing me to that.) The reason that we don’t have five thousand police on duty (or however many there were beginning on Saturday) is that we don’t expect this. We RELY on people not looting and not committing arson. How many cops would it take if all three million of us in the metro area decided that we were going to break into Target and every other store? You could not HAVE enough police for that. Most people abide by the contract – and one of those things in the contract is that we don’t go around looting and burning stores. AHA – so those demonstrators – those BLACK demonstrators – are not holding up their end of the contract then. Why is that?

I have often talked about what was expected of us as we grew up. We were never to think more of ourselves than we should. But we were ALWAYS expected to do right. When I was eighteen years old, I was rightfully convicted of unlawful assembly. A group of us assembled unlawfully to tap a beer keg. About twenty-five uninvited police guests came and that sort of ruined the party. Here is my point – when my day in court came, we knew in advance that the fine would be $32. I did not have $32. If the fine were not paid, we would be (at least temporarily) put in jail. This episode broke my mother’s heart, but my Pop was a little more steely about it. We were expected to DO RIGHT, to abide by the contract, and since I had failed, he had no intention of giving me money for that failure. And he did NOT. I walked out of that courtroom (the court of Hanging Hank Fauskee) only because some buddies had more money than their fine and loaned it to me.

But there was the other side to the contract. We were expected to abide by society’s norms but in exchange for that we had unlimited opportunities. I went to college on partial scholarships for my first two years at community college. When I was a junior at the University after my first quarter, a professor stopped me in the hall one day, told me to fill out an application form, and I never paid another penny of tuition to the University again. I qualified for and received National Defense Student Loans in addition and with all those combined with what I earned working part time I had virtually no debt when I graduated. But my privilege went a lot further than that. I grew up in a stable home. There was no domestic violence (other than when we threw the basketball through the window one cold Saturday night). We had plenty to eat. We had adequate clothing and our house was warm. But even more importantly we were privileged to learn how to WORK, how to run a business, how to engage with other people. Does this NOT sound like privilege? Well these things are SOOOOO far away, so absolutely unattainable for so many of our people, particularly so many black and brown people.

My point is, it was and IS easy for me to abide by the contract. Oh, I have had a few ups and downs, but life has been good to me. I have accumulated a LOT to lose. Yes, there are the material blessings – a house, a car, and some savings, but more than that I live in a nice, quiet neighborhood, in the middle of suburban affluence. We have very, very few murders, arson, or other crime. I have a LOT to lose if the societal contract breaks down. And even at that, our material blessings by the standards of MANY in our society are paltry. Think of how much Jeff Bezos “has to lose” or all of the other “Captains of Industry”. Do not misinterpret this – I am in no way condoning the violence and mayhem that I saw last week. But I think the looters and arsonists that I saw were VOIDING the contract because they have NOTHING to lose. And according to my Pop, when people have nothing to lose, they do things that we don’t expect, they do things that don’t seem reasonable to us. Or as Trevor Noah said, while they were gaining nothing from setting a Target on fire, neither were they losing anything. If they get caught it is not like they are going to pay a huge fine draining the thousands of dollars they have saved. For years many of these “have-nots” as they are called, have unilaterally kept the contract. But when they see people who look like them, too many people, murdered or beaten simply because of the color of their skin, they look around and see that they have NOTHING and that they probably never will have much. They believe that their possibilities are systematically minimized. Their pursuit of happiness, promised to them in our constitution, is hamstrung. They conclude that THE OTHER SIDE has broken the contract. They have nothing to lose, and as my Dad said, that is NOT a good place to be.

So, do I have a solution? I have told you before I only write this blog so that I can spout off. I don’t want to do the hard work that is going to be necessary to restore the contract. But MAYBE part of that restoration involves somehow making sure that both parties to the social contract have some skin in the game. How can our minorities feel like they have something to lose? Well for starters, maybe if they had gainful employment that paid a living wage. I am not saying that every minority person is going to be a rocket scientist. But we could at least allow them to have the dignity to receive a wage that can put food on their tables, a wage that does not require them to seek hand-outs to survive. But there needs to be more than just providing a minimum wage to every American. Every American needs to BELIEVE that they have a CHANCE to live the good life, to believe that if they work hard, study hard, do the right things – keep the contract – that they can make it. WAY too many Americans no longer believe this. We have got to find a way to restore that hope and belief, and we need to be systematic about it. Yes, this may involve a government program. And of course, well-intentioned government programs can fail. But we have GOT to try. Our society can not survive unless we as members of the society believe in the contract and abide by the contract. We will never have peace and prosperity as long as we have this significant segment of the population who is opting out.