The Mint and the Pandemic: Making Coins

When the pandemic struck the world in March 2020, it was clear that it would have significant economic impacts. Exactly what those impacts would be was, however, at that time, not always clear.

One of the less obvious effects was a shortage of circulating coins in the United States. Billions of coins existed, but they were either in businesses which were temporarily closed or permanently closed, or they were in people’s homes, and with millions of people under “lockdown,” those coins weren’t circulating.

The types of transactions which often involve coins were particularly hard-hit: people used more credit cards than cash, made more online purchases, and casual foot traffic in city centers was sparse to non-existent. Buying a newspaper, a cup of coffee, or a candy bar while walking downtown — once an ordinary part of daily life — quickly became rare.

To keep the economy alive, the U.S. Mint ramped up production to replace the coins which were frozen in idle cash registers or in homes. Writing for American Banker magazine, Jon Prior reports:

To help push more coins into circulation, the U.S. Mint last year boosted production to levels not seen since 2017.

The Mint’s two facilities in Denver and Philadelphia churned out 14.8 billion coins for circulation in 2020, up 26% from less than 12 billion the year before, according to data the agency provided to American Banker.

The effort was part of a plan between the government, coin collection companies, retailers and banks to cure a shortage in tills across the U.S. as in-person spending slowed in the early months of the pandemic and online and card transactions soared. The sudden scarcity of change was one of the unseen economic side-effects of the coronavirus pandemic, but that boost in production, combined with increased economic activity in recent months, means that coin circulation is finally returning to normal, industry officials say.

The extra production by the Mint happened at a time when maintaining normal production levels was already a challenge. The increased mintages represent a heroic effort.

In raw numbers, for example, the total number of nickels produced in 2018 was 1256.4 million; in 2019 it was 1094.89 million, but the pandemic in 2020 pushed the mintage to 1623.1 million. The increase in output was shared by both the Denver mint and the Philadelphia mint. Those are the only two mints in the United States which produce circulating coins. Smaller mints in San Francisco and in West Point produce coins only for investing and collecting, but not for retail circulation.

Similar increases were achieved in the production of the dime and quarter.

On the other hand, coins deemed less essential to commerce — the penny, the half-dollar, and the dollar coin — saw production levels in 2020 similar to, or slightly lower than, the previous two years, as resources were directed to the more urgently-needed coins.

Carter’s Accomplishments: The 39th President

Historians are often tempted to devote little time or energy to studying the presidency of Jimmy Carter. If they do pay attention to his one four-year term in office, they routinely dismiss his administration as a failure. But he might merit a second look.

Carter continued at least two agenda items from his predecessor, President Gerald R. Ford, whom Carter defeated in the November 1976 election. Upon taking office in January 1977, Carter embraced both Ford’s affection for deregulation and Ford’s commitment to take an unwavering stance in support of human rights.

In the transportation sector, Carter achieved some milestones of deregulation, as historian Kai Bird writes:

Despite his aversion to political machinations — such as cutting deals with smarmy congressmen — Carter was an effective and extraordinarily productive president. He deregulated the airline industry, making it possible for middle-class Americans to fly.

He was willing to contradict one of his party's major allies: organized labor. The Democratic Party had significant support from labor unions at the time. Carter risked their dissent:

Trade unions opposed his deregulation of airlines, trucking and railroads.

Although deregulation ultimately proved to energize the economy and help working-class families, the move was one factor in Carter’s loss in the November 1980 election. Many union members voted for Carter’s opponent, President Ronald Reagan.

Carter maintained President Ford’s focus on human rights. During the Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations, this focus must be understood in the context of the Cold War. More and more evidence was coming to light, revealing the ongoing violation of human rights by the Soviet Socialists, spanning decades from the 1930s to the 1980s.

President Ford drew international attention to the question with a document known as the Helsinki Accords. Carter continued Ford’s pattern. A global consensus among many nations emerged, and international sentiment was against the USSR. During Carter’s administration, Kai Bird notes,

The principle of human rights became a cornerstone of America’s foreign policy.

Jimmy Carter was the first president to use his nickname in an official capacity. Rarely, if ever, was he referred to as “James,” but routinely as “Jimmy.” This was a departure from two centuries of precedent.

Gerald Ford was never officially listed as “Jerry,” and John Kennedy was never officially cited as “Jack.” The nicknames were only for the closest friends and family. But Jimmy Carter was known universally by that name.

Some later presidents would follow Carter’s pattern: Bill Clinton was never cited as “William,” and Joe Biden was never listed as “Joseph.”

Although Carter failed to get reelected, and was thereby limited to four years in office, his presidency nonetheless merits attention.

Urban Planning: The Third Way

City planners in the United States and elsewhere have long been subject to the dogma that there are two options for cities. The first option is the automotive city, with rings and spokes of multi-lane limited-access freeways and highways, large multi-lane surface streets as the main arteries, smaller surface streets branching off the larger ones, and many parking spaces. The second option is the walkable city, with generous sidewalks, bike paths, and public transportation like streetcars and subways.

The dichotomy between these two has sometimes become so extreme that when one option is chosen, the other option is not only ignored, but actively discouraged. Planners who choose the automotive option will deliberately omit sidewalks; planners who choose the walkable option will deliberately work to reduce the number of parking spaces and make the driving experience frustrating in other ways.

This binary framework reduces urban planning to “either/or” decisions, simplistic thinking, and in some cases political conflicts.

There is a third way. Most cities in the United States — small, medium, or large — can embrace both of these options simultaneously. A city can be walkable and automotive at the same time. It can have a robust public transportation system and lots of parking at the same time.

There are exceptions: cities whose geographical peculiarities make them less flexible, like San Francisco and parts of New York.

But other cities can take advantage of America’s resources: lots of open land and the ability to generate concrete, steel, and asphalt in large amounts.

An office worker in a city might choose to be the only passenger in her or his SUV driving to work two days a week, bicycle to work another two days per week, and take the streetcar to work on the final day of the work week. City planners can make all of these convenient and equally convenient.

The economics of this arrangement can become self-sustaining: more people will be lured into the city from the suburbs, either for an afternoon shopping trip, or to live in the city permanently. Increased revenue will pay for the infrastructure.

Nixon’s Visit to China: Playing Cold War Communist Powers Against Each Other

The presidency of Richard Nixon, from January 1969 to August 1974, is known for many things. One of them is Nixon’s engagement with China. His visit to China in February 1972 was the first time a U.S. president had set foot in the country. China and the U.S. had no diplomatic communication with each other for over twenty years.

On a surface level, Nixon’s rapprochement with China could be seen as a softening of America's resistance to communism during the Cold War. He was granting diplomatic recognition to a communist regime which was responsible for the deaths of millions of Chinese, and was responsible for the egregious violations of human rights and civil rights.

On a deeper level, however, Nixon’s China policy was a clever way to play two communist nations against each other. From 1949, when the communists took over China, the Soviet Socialists had an alliance with China. Mao had a comfortable working relationship with Stalin.

But after Stalin died in 1953, China’s alliance with the Soviet Socialists began to deteriorate. Nixon saw this as an opportunity. When Nixon was in China, the Soviets worried that a close relationship between America and China would leave the USSR out. So Nixon visited Moscow in May 1972. At that point, the Chinese worried that America would develop a good connection to the Soviets.

Nixon was able to play the two communist nations against each other. Nixon’s successor, President Gerald Ford, recalls:

Our new ties with the Soviets were possible, I believed, only because the Soviet leaders were becoming concerned about developments within the People’s Republic of China. Both Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai were making increasingly antagonistic speeches toward the Kremlin. Nixon sensed that the Chinese leaders feared and distrusted the Soviets. Their long-standing border dispute was a festering sore. Mao had never forgiven the Soviets for mistreating him in the 1950s, and he was concerned about Soviet intentions in the Pacific. Skillfully, Nixon moved to take advantage of the split.

U.S. diplomat Richard Haass sees Nixon’s policy as a kind of balance. Nixon’s goal, according to Haass, was to make China and the USSR feel equally jealous of each other’s relationship with America:

The purpose of the policy developed by Richard M. Nixon and Henry Kissinger was to use China as a counterweight to the Soviet Union and shape China’s foreign policy, not its internal nature.

The timing of Nixon’s visits to China and to the USSR must be understood in the context of the Vietnam War. It was not until 1973 that the final peace documents were signed, and that the U.S. began withdrawing its troops from Vietnam.

Both China and the USSR supported North Vietnam to varying degrees during the war. China’s support for North Vietnam was continued but reduced after 1968, when China began to reserve more soldiers and equipment for anticipated direct combat between the USSR and China.

In cementing China’s split from the Soviet Union, the United States gained leverage that contributed to the Cold War ending when and how it did.

Although China was interested in empire-building in southeast Asia, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, China was not as aggressive in the South China Sea region as it became after 1990 and especially after 2000.

China’s ability to pose a military and economic threat to the nations of the South China Sea regions was limited in the 1960s and 1970s. Nixon’s rapprochement with China cannot be seen as opening the door to the Chinese expansionism that the following decades would see. At the time of Nixon’s visit, lacked the military power and economic power needed to take control of the South China Sea.

A Threat to Tolerance: The Terror and Intimidation of “Wokeness” and Its “Cancel Culture”

Tolerance is clearly expressed in the founding documents of the United States. Without the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press, the United States would be a different country, with a different culture and society. When Evelyn Beatrice Hall wrote that “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,” she was thinking of the French author Voltaire, but her words apply more accurately to the United States than to France during the Enlightenment Era.

If tolerance is central to America, then intolerance is a poison to it. Henry Olsen, writing in The Washington Post in July 2020, cites contemporary examples of such narrowmindedness:

The intellectually intolerant mob claimed two high-profile victims Tuesday with the resignations of New York Times editor Bari Weiss and New York Magazine journalist Andrew Sullivan. These are just two examples of the deadly virus spreading through our public life.

The current version of bigotry is often called ‘woke’ or ‘wokeness,’ and at some point in the past may have arisen from a sincere desire for justice. Today it still garners support from people of goodwill who mistakenly assume that this social trend is still a quest for justice, when it is in reality a terrorized weapon of intimidation.

“Today’s ‘cancel culture,’” writes Henry Olson, “stems from a noble goal — ending racial discrimination.” But it is now wielded against people who express themselves on a wide range of topics: it is wielded against them for merely disagreeing with those who generate this version of political correctness.

It has transmogrified into something sinister and inimical to freedom. Battling racism is good and necessary; trying to suppress voices that one disagrees with is not.

Whether it is called ‘wokeness’ or ‘political correctness,’ it is in any case truly intolerant. It is an attempt to police thought, speech, and the written word.

It seeks to do the one thing that America has always sworn not to do: enforce uniformity of thought. Indeed, this principle, enshrined in the First Amendment, is so central to American national identity that it is one of the five quotes inscribed in the Jefferson Memorial: “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”

The victims of this “cancel culture” — in this case, an editor and a journalist, but there are many more cases — are excluded in the name of inclusiveness, a delicious linguistic contradiction. They are hounded by narrowmindedness in the name of broadmindedness. The “woke” individuals demand that these victims receive no tolerance, because in “woke” thought, it is only by denying them tolerance that the institutions can be truly tolerant.

Weiss’s resignation letter describes numerous examples of her colleagues judging her guilty of “wrongthink” and trying to pressure superiors to fire or suppress her. She explains that “some coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly ‘inclusive’ one, while others post ax emojis next to my name.” Others, she wrote, called her a racist and a Nazi, or criticized her on Twitter without reprimand. She notes that this behavior, tolerated by the paper through its editors, constitutes “unlawful discrimination, hostile work environment, and constructive discharge.”

Sullivan’s reason for departure is less clear — though he said it is “self-evident.” He had publicly supported Weiss, writing: “The mob bullied and harassed a young woman for thoughtcrimes. And her editors stood by and watched.”

In other words, both Weiss and Sullivan — like so many others — seem to have left their jobs because they were targeted for refusing to conform to its ideas of right thinking.

The founding texts of the United States — The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, and The Bill of Rights — create a framework of liberty in which each individual human being is acknowledged a sovereign and autonomous agent who can think, speak, and write as she or he pleases. This intellectual foundation is detailed in the writings of Thomas Paine and John Locke.

But freedom and individualism are not valuable to those who promote political correctness and wokeness.

The mob even sacrifices people whose only crime is familial connection on its altar.

In an update of Orwell’s famous novel, individuals are pressured to confess to “thoughtcrimes” in media campaigns which amount to show trials. A “show trial” is staged: its outcome is predetermined, and it is a cautionary example to others. So it is with the “cancel culture” of wokeness: there is no chance to be judged innocent, and the purpose of the attacks is to intimidate others into silence.

Such tactics work best when they force people to confess to seek repentance for the crimes they may or may not have committed.

Whether or not the individuals persecuted by wokeness are guilty or innocent does not matter to those who are “woke” — wokeness is the process of terrorizing the masses by making an example of a few isolated individuals. Whether or not the individuals did what they are accused of doing, and whether or not what they are accused of doing is right or wrong, doesn’t matter. The public understands the message clearly: do as you are told, or suffer.

The woke inquisition uses the same tactic, forcing those caught in its maw to renounce prior statements they find objectionable. NFL quarterback Drew Brees surrendered to the roar while noted leftists such as J.K. Rowling and Noam Chomsky are being pilloried for their defense of free speech.

“Wokeness” and “political correctness” are nothing new. They go back centuries and millennia. They’ve been called “chauvinism” and “bullying,” or “bigotry” and “intolerance.”

The reader need simply ask: Are human beings free to speak and write? If so, then the dignity and value of each human life is recognized and honored.

Are people subject to intimidation and fear for what they’ve said and written? If the answer is “yes,” then decency is threatened.

Desegregating Little Rock: Eisenhower Promotes Justice

During WW2, General Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower established himself as a serious advocate of civil rights. During the Battle of the Bulge in late 1944 and early 1945, Eisenhower defied directives coming from the Department of War: the Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, appointed by President Franklin Roosevelt, ordered that U.S. soldiers be segregated into Black and White units, and that Black soldiers were not eligible for combat duty, for the extra pay that came with it, or for the promotions that often resulted from it.

Seeing what needed to be done, Eisenhower desegregated and integrated his troops. The result was victory.

Eight years later, General Eisenhower became President Eisenhower. During his campaign, he expressed his intentions to desegregate and integrate various aspects of American life. His opponents in the election, nominated by the Democratic Party, argued for segregationist policies.

Once elected, Ike proceeded both resolutely and cautiously. He was resolute in that he would not be deterred from his goal of integration; he was cautious in that he knew that his actions could cause angry backlash from the Democrats, as historian Kasey Pipes writes:

As early as 1953, Eisenhower had written in his diary of the possibility that a “conflict of the police powers of the state and of the nation would set back the cause of progress in race relations for a long, long time.” Almost alone among political leaders of the time, Ike feared that a Little Rock-type eruption could happen. This premonition guided his every move. Thus, from the beginning of his presidency, he moved carefully and cautiously. He wanted to bring about change on civil rights, but he wanted to do so in a way that did not “inflame passions” as he often said. This explains why even after the Little Rock crisis began he moved deliberately. He wanted to exhaust every possible option before resorting to force. Still, when he did try everything else with no success, he didn’t hesitate to use military action to enforce the order of the federal court.

Ike was not dramatic. He was committed to doing the right thing, and his commitment was unshakeable, but also unemotional. Ike was driven by duty, not by passion.

The Democratic Party had made Orval Faubus the governor of Arkansas in 1954. Faubus used his powers to continue his party’s segregationist policies. Ike’s communication with Faubus in 1957 exemplify his tendency to avoid inflammatory rhetoric while maintaining his determined stance:

Eisenhower replied to Faubus on September 5 with a brief and elliptical message: “The Federal Constitution will be upheld by me by every legal means at my command.” Eisenhower intended this to sound like a thinly veiled threat.

After exhausting any chances of persuading Faubus to comply with the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision — a decision made under the watchful eye of Chief Justice Earl Warren, who was an Eisenhower appointee — Ike knew that he needed to ignore Faubus and take his own actions.

To comply with the Supreme Court’s decision, Faubus should have allowed the integration of Little Rock Central High School. But he didn’t. It was Eisenhower’s job to see to it that Black students had access to education in that school.

In September 1957, Eisenhower ordered the legendary 101st Airborne Division, an elite military unit, into Little Rock. The 101st made sure that African American students had access to Central High School and that they were safe. Eisenhower had made it happen: desegregation was advancing.

Black leaders praised Ike’s decision. Martin Luther King Jr. wired the president, thanking him for his support of “Christian traditions of fair play and brotherhood.”

Ike was pragmatic. He avoided drama and passion. He preferred to get things done with as few words as possible, and certainly without inflammatory rhetoric. He also wanted to achieve goals with a minimum of collateral damage. He achieved integration, desegregation, and advancements in civil rights, and hoped to do so with as little trauma and destruction as possible.

While successful and popular, Ike’s calm approach was occasionally criticized, as Kasey Pipes explains:

Eisenhower favored gradual reform while many in the civil rights movement urged dramatic change. He often told his staff that “more than laws” had to be changed in order for America to truly be a just society. Indeed, no less a source than Dr. Martin Luther King believed Ike was sincere in wanting to help the cause of civil rights. But King faulted Ike’s “conservatism” which was “fixed and rigid” and prevented him from moving more quickly and more dramatically to enact civil rights. At Little Rock, the president did not hesitate to defend the order of the federal court. Even still, his preferred approach was to let the local and state authorities find a solution. When it became obvious that Governor Orval Faubus had no intention of solving the problem, Ike solved it for him.

Although MLK didn’t always agree with Ike’s tone, the two of them nonetheless successfully collaborated. MLK and Eisenhower worked together, along with Vice President Richard Nixon, to promote the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and to ensure its passage through Congress.

This was followed by a similar process to obtain passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1960.

The Nature of the Communist Organization: Understanding the Danger

Education is, and has long been seen as, a defense against evil forces: against the forces which would take away ordinary people’s liberty and freedom. A nation whose citizens are well-educated finds a source of strength and protection in those citizens.

It is also true, however, that educational systems can be subverted and used to produce those who endanger the lives, and the ways of life, of their fellow citizens. Although the international communist conspiracy evokes images of downtrodden impoverished workers rebelling against an allegedly exploitative economic system, historian John Stormer points out that self-styled revolutionaries and radicals come from elite and wealthy social groups:

The membership of the first Communist spy ring uncovered in the U.S. Government was not spawned in the sweatshops of New York’s lower east side or the tenant farms of the South. Alger Hiss, Nathan Witt, Harry Dexter White, Lee Pressman, John Abt, Lauchlin Currie and their comrades came to high government posts from Harvard law School.

During the Cold War — roughly 1946 to 1990 — the Soviet espionage network inside the United States promoted the notion that communism and socialism were fervently desired by those in the working classes. It is clear, however, that the energy behind the international communist conspiracy came from well-educated and affluent people. They could use their influence and social networks to recruit spies and gain access to policy makers and opinion makers, as well as access to confidential military and political information.

A report produced by the U.S. Senate explains:

A trite explanation offered by the ill-informed is that communism is a product of inequalities under our social system. Hence, these people argue, if we will alleviate these conditions, we will never have to worry about communism. Since it is manifestly impossible to devise a social system in which everybody will be satisfied, this would mean that we should meekly fold our arms and accept communism in our midst as a necessary evil for which we ourselves are chiefly to blame. In the second place, this approach overlooks the fact that millions of dollars spent on cleverly devised Communist propaganda is bound to have some effect in any society, no matter how relatively contented, especially when supplemented by the activities of thousands of ardent zealots.

Socialism and communism, political ideologies allegedly designed to benefit the lower classes, are most popular among the upper classes. There might be several reasons for this: some wealthy people might sincerely if mistakenly believe that these ideologies would help the poor; others might cynically see an opportunity to gain political power for themselves while pretending to have altruistic motives.

In any case, there is a clear statistical correlation between affluence and an affection for communism and socialism. The Senate report states:

The misery theory of communism runs contrary to actual fact in our country. New York State, for example, has approximately 50% of the total Communist Party membership. Yet it is second in terms of per capita income as well as per capita school expenditures. California is second with approximately 16 percent of the total party membership and yet it is fourth in terms of per capita income and seventh in terms of per capita school expenditures. Similarly, Illinois is third in membership standing with approximately 5 percent and yet it is sixth in per capita income and third in terms of money spent for schools.

While the wealthy may be inclined to promote socialism and communism, the working class, allegedly the beneficiaries of these ideologies, oppose them, seeing better chances for advancement in a system of free enterprise, free markets, and property rights. Those who’ve actually experienced poverty, rather than those who’ve merely read about it, resist the encroachment of communism and socialism. The Senate report continues:

Conversely, Mississippi is lowest in the scale of Communist Party membership but is also lowest in per capita income. The misery theory of communism does not jibe with these figures nor with the fact that such wealthy persons as Frederick Vanderbilt Field, and prominent members of the Hollywood film colony, have been found to be members of the Communist Party. Indeed the misery theory of communism is exactly what the Communists would have us believe, in order to mislead us.

The most vocal and militant proponents of communism and socialism, as well as the disguised versions of those ideologies presented under a veneer of more acceptable domestic political wordings, come almost exclusively from a class of people whose wealth is significant enough to allow them expansive leisure time.

Various celebrities from the movies, TV, and popular music industries routinely promote communism and socialism, while enjoying a lifestyle of chauffeur-driven limousines, lavish travel, and the costliest jewelry and wardrobes. They routinely own several large homes, scattered around the country if not around the world, each of which is worth many times the humble houses of the workers whom they claim to represent.

The ideologies which claim to help the poor are, in reality, the toys of the rich.

The Civil Rights General Becomes the Civil Rights President: Eisenhower Desegregates Little Rock

Several things remained constant when General ‘Ike’ Eisenhower became President Eisenhower. One of them was his commitment, not to talk, but to act on behalf of civil rights.

Eisenhower spoke less, but did more, than his White House predecessors Harry Truman and Franklin Roosevelt. In fact, Eisenhower directly opposed President Roosevelt and Roosevelt’s Secretary of War, Henry Stimson. Roosevelt and Stimson imposed a policy of segregation onto the U.S. Army.

As Supreme Allied Commander, Eisenhower wouldn’t and didn’t accept Roosvelt’s segregationist edicts. In late 1944 and early 1945, Ike defied Roosevelt, and integrated various military units as he saw fit. Later, Eisenhower would use the word “justice” to explain such actions, as historian Kasey Pipes explains:

Eisenhower’s career intersected with the civil rights movement at several key points. The first was the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. General Eisenhower, needing more troops, essentially went against war-department policy (drafted by George Marshall) and offered African-American troops the chance to fight at the front. After the war, troops who volunteered to go to the front of the line at the Bulge weren’t eager to go to the back of the bus in Birmingham. This helped build the momentum of the civil-rights movement in the postwar era. As President, Eisenhower found himself again confronted with civil-rights challenges including the two Brown rulings, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Emmett Till murder, the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and, of course, Little Rock. The story of the civil-rights movement in the 1940s and 1950s can’t be told without telling the story of Eisenhower.

On September 9, 1957, Ike signed into law the 1957 Civil Rights Act. He’d worked together with Martin Luther King and Vice President Richard Nixon to get Congressional approval for the bill.

Less than two weeks later, Ike ordered the 101st Airborne, a legendary infantry division, to Little Rock, Arkansas. Eisenhower was determined to overrule the Democrat Party there, which, in the person of Governor Orval Faubus, was preventing Black students from attending a public high school.

Ike’s victory in Little Rock was a continuation of the civil rights emphasis which he'd expressed as he was first running for president.

“During the 1952 presidential campaign,” historian William Hitchcock explains, Eisenhower spoke clearly about his support for the civil rights movement, “stating that he would eagerly abolish segregation in the nation’s capital and continue to expunge it from the armed services.”

Eisenhower saw the matter clearly: He’d appointed Earl Warren to the Supreme Court. Under Warren’s leadership, the famous Brown vs. Board of Education cases, two of them, were decided. As president, it was Ike’s duty to carry out the Supreme Court decisions, which he did in Little Rock, as Kasey Pipes reports:

Little Rock should be remembered as a seminal moment in the civil-rights struggle — perhaps the seminal moment. If integration had failed at Little Rock, it’s hard to imagine it succeeding anywhere. And it would be great if parents, teachers, and journalists would remember that the 101st Airborne soldiers did not arrive on their own orders. Dwight D. Eisenhower had something to do with that.

Little Rock wasn’t the beginning of Ike’s civil rights engagement, and it wasn’t the end, either. Eisenhower wanted to strengthen and solidify the gains made in 1957, and so he pushed for the 1960 Civil Rights Act, which he was able to sign into law before he left office.

Not Race, Not Income Levels, but Family Structures are Weakening the Nation: The Family’s Impact on Society, and Society’s Impact on the Family

Statisticians and social scientists are concluding, sometimes reluctantly, and often against their own ideologies, that the single most significant variable in the life of a child from before birth to the late teenage years is whether or not that child is a member of a functioning and functional family.

There is a set of variables which shapes the family: income level, religion, race, the presence or absence of substance abuse, gambling, etc. But the single most powerful variable is whether or not the family is headed by an intact married couple.

The divide between rich and poor, the divide between races, and divide between other demographic factors all pale in comparison to the massive influence which parents have on their children.

The biggest gap in society now is not between levels of income, and not between races, but between the single-parent family and the intact family. Citing the research of James Wilson, Mary Eberstadt writes:

It’s the family divide, Wilson argued in his book Two Nations (1998), that has become the best indicator for all kinds of problematic behaviors: dropping out of school, going to jail, delinquency, emotional problems, out-of-wedlock births, early sexual activity, and unemployment, to name just some. “These differences,” noted Wilson as he analyzed the piles of numbers, “are not explained by income. Children in one-parent families are much worse off than those in two-parent families even when both families have the same earnings.”

Statistically, the impact of different income levels is erased when the factor of family structure is included in the calculations.

This surprising result was not sought, and not even wanted, by those who found it. Both culture and policy have believed that race, ethnicity, and income were the variables which most influenced the nature of childhood.

It is an idea so potent that it still has the power to shock, even 14 years after its first appearance: Family structure has replaced poverty as the best predictor of youth problems.

Policies and programs designed to help children have instead merely enabled the underlying cause. With good intentions, society has created mechanisms which make it ever easier for parents to abdicate their responsibilities.

Think of all the institutions created to replace the family. What is the dawn-to-dusk school day, and the concomitant attempt to abolish summer vacation, if not a necessity mothered by the empty home? What is the tres chic anti-bullying movement, if not an elaborate, improvised response to the need to do something that capable fathers, especially, used to do — i.e., stick up for their kids?

Nothing will substitute for parents. The best and most ethical social workers, teachers, counselors, and coaches are excellent ancillaries for parents, but poor replacements for parents.

The search continues for substitute mothers, substitute fathers, and substitutes for all the others who once took care of their own.

An effective way to address education problems, to address recreational or illegal drug use, to address juvenile crime, and to address teen pregnancy is to explore, and then reduce, the underlying causes which create increasing numbers of single-parent families.

Few girls or women, in their late teen years, have it as an express goal to become a single mother. They do not, and did not, want this. Which factors have led to the rise in single-parent families, and how can they be curbed? Both the factors, and the actions which can reduce their impact on society, may be partly addressable by policy actions, but will certainly require interventions that no city, county, state, or federal government can orchestrate. Organic changes in culture and society, in families and lifestyles, cannot be legislated.

The occasional policy move might help, but it will be people, not governments, who begin to create better lives for children in American society.

Kennedy Opposes Eisenhower’s Civil Rights Act: JFK Resists Ike’s Move Toward Justice

In late 1944 and early 1945, General Eisenhower took bold steps to integrate the U.S. Army during the Battle of the Bulge. Defying orders from President Roosevelt and Secretary of War Henry Stimson, Eisenhower ordered Black soldiers and White soldiers to work together in combat units. This opened the way for Black soldiers to receive combat pay and be eligible for more promotions.

African Americans enthusiastically voted for him in 1952, and General Eisenhower became President Eisenhower.

During his eight years as president, in the words of historian William Hitchcock, Eisenhower acted, and acted “decisively, to advance the progress of civil rights.”

Known fondly as “Ike,” his actions included appointing Blacks to high federal offices. Ike appointed Jesse Ernest Wilkins, who became the first African American to attend White House cabinet-level meetings.

Ike also used federal troops to overcome the resistance of Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus. Ike ordered the troops to protect Black children who were attending public schools in the city of Little Rock.

When Eisenhower proposed a civil rights bill to Congress in 1957, he encountered fierce opposition from future president John F. Kennedy, as historian C.N. Trueman writes:

Kennedy put political realism before any form of beliefs when he voted against Eisenhower’s 1957 Civil Rights Act.

100% of the Republican votes cast, both in the Senate and in the House of Representatives, supported the bill. But many Democrats, under the leadership of Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, opposed the bill:

The Democrats were almost united to a politician in their opposition to the bill / act. Kennedy had aspirations to be the Democrats’ next presidential candidate in the 1960 election. If he was seen to be taking the party line and demonstrating strong leadership with regards to opposing the bill, this would do his chances no harm whatsoever. This proved to be the case and Kennedy led the Democrats to victory over Richard Nixon in 1960.

So it was that John F. Kennedy opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1957, while President Eisenhower supported it. Eisenhower won.

Why was Ike so adamant in championing civil rights legislation? Because he saw that, despite the advancements he’d already made, there was still work to be done, as historian Nate Sullivan writes:

During the 1950s, African Americans continued to suffer racial discrimination. While the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1870, gave African Americans the right to vote, they often were subject to voter intimidation.

“This was especially true in the” states controlled by the Democratic Party.

Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower sought to change this through the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957, which provided federal oversight to ensure that African Americans had the opportunity to vote free from intimidation or coercion. This was the first federal civil rights legislation since the Civil Rights Act of 1875.

While the Republicans were united in their support of the bill, the Democrats were divided. Among the leaders of the Democratic Party at that time were both Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.

As a Democrat, Kennedy was hesitant to lend his full support to the Republican’s civil rights bill.

While some Democrats were willing to vote for the civil rights bill, many Democrats “were fiercely opposed to civil rights reforms.” Some Democrats opposed the bill simply by voting against it. Others took the additional step of adding hostile amendments to the bill, hoping thereby to weaken its effectiveness. “By 1957, Kennedy had his eye on the White House, and he did not want to lose the support of” his fellow Democrats. Voting for the bill would have destroyed Kennedy’s presidential hopes.

He therefore voted against the bill (it did pass however). In fact, throughout his career as a senator, Kennedy chose not to make civil rights an issue. Many historians feel he took this approach because he did not want to lose the support of his party. He likely was concerned about coming across as too radical and alienating his own base.

In an ironic twist, Lyndon Johnson found a way to claim that he supported civil rights: he supported an amended version of the bill. But Johnson’s amendments were designed to weaken the bill to the point of ineffectiveness. So Johnson was able to gain support from both sides. Yet it was clear that Johnson had no genuine desire to see advancement in civil rights.

Eisenhower signed the 1957 Civil Rights Act into law. He’d worked together with his vice president, Richard Nixon, and with Martin Luther King. The three of them had found or created enough support to move the bill through Congress.

His next move, to overcome the opposition of Kennedy and Johnson, was to see the 1960 Civil Rights Act through Congress, which he likewise signed into law. The 1960 version of the act was designed to close certain loopholes which Johnson had put into the 1957 version.

When Eisenhower completed his time in office, leaving the White House in January 1961, he’d compiled a series of civil rights victories.

The Eisenhower Presidency: A Pivotal Moment in America’s Civil Rights Era

When Dwight Eisenhower won the 1952 presidential election against a resolutely segregationist Democratic Party, he did so in part because of the credibility he’d earned with African American voters nearly a decade earlier.

In late 1944 and early 1945, Eisenhower, as Supreme Allied Commander, was engaged in the intense fighting at the Battle of the Bulge. As an officer, he needed maximum flexibility in maneuvering his troops to different locations as needed.

The mobility of U.S. soldiers was limited by directives from President Roosevelt, and from Roosevelt’s Secretary of War, Henry Stimson. Both Roosevelt and Stimson wanted Eisenhower to move his troops within the confines of their segregationist directives: they wanted Black and White soldiers to remain in separate units, and to deny Black soldiers the opportunity to volunteer for combat service.

Eisenhower was massively frustrated by the segregationist regulations. Logistics within a major modern army are complicated in any case, and the blatantly racist policies of Roosevelt and Stimson only made matters worse.

In a courageous move, Eisenhower disobeyed the orders from Washington, integrating the troops under his command, and giving African Americans in the army the opportunity to be in combat. With combat came quicker and more significant promotions, and extra pay. Black voters did not forget, and in 1952 voted for him in large numbers.

African Americans voted for Ike in even larger numbers to reelect him in 1956.

Known fondly by his nickname, “Ike” was popular among all Americans, and he used his social capital to promote the civil rights movement, as historian William Hitchcock writes,

He presided over two enormously important developments that would shape the history of race in America. He lent support to Attorney General Brownell’s strenuous efforts to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1957; and he used the power of his office to enforce court-ordered school desegregation in Little Rock, Arkansas, overcoming the resistance of the demagogic governor, Orval Faubus.

Eisenhower, and his vice president, Richard Nixon, had invited Martin Luther King, Jr. to the White House. Ike, Nixon, and MLK strategized about how to find enough votes in Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1957. In the end, of the votes cast to turn the bill into law, 100% of the Republican votes cast, both in the House of Representatives and in the Senate, supported the bill. A number of Democrats also voted for the bill.

Between this victory in Congress, and Ike’s use of federal troops to protect the “Little Rock Nine” as they attended school, 1957 was a landmark year in the civil rights movement. Encouraged by these developments, Eisenhower went farther. He introduced another civil rights bill.

The strength of the 1957 Act had been somewhat weakened by Senator Lyndon Johnson, who’d added some hostile amendments to it. Ike sought to strengthen the provisions of the 1957 law by passing the 1960 Civil Rights Act.

By the time Eisenhower left office, he’d passed two major pieces of civil rights legislation, collaborated with MLK, and made a clear and adamant stand in favor of desegregation in Little Rock. Ike achieved significant forward movement in civil rights.

When Government is a Problem: The Unintended Consequences of Ignoring the Separation of Powers

All kinds of people complain about the government: rich and poor, old and young, men and women, Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, Progressives and Libertarians. Why? As historian Ben Shapiro notes, “the problem with government isn’t that government doesn’t get enough done — it’s that it gets too much done.”

The government is often tempted to be overactive — to do more than it should. The main task of the government is to protect the lives, freedoms, and properties of its citizens. But often, governments want to do more than that — to regulate, encourage, or discourage activities; to undertake programs and projects that go beyond defending people’s individual political liberty.

To be sure, often government actions are undertaken with good intentions, and with sincere desires to help. But even when the government wants to help, it cannot. In some situations, the best thing the government can do is stand back, and let society fix its own problems.

As President Ronald Reagan said in 1986, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help.”

Well-intentioned government programs usually have unintended consequences: Government programs to end poverty actually cause more poverty; when the government tried to reduce illegal drug use, such use increased; when governments try to make peace, the result is usually a war; when governments try to fix the economy, wages fall and more people become unemployed.

In 1849 Henry David Thoreau wrote, “That government is best which governs least.” He was likely recalling a magazine article from 1837 which included this line: “The best government is that which governs least.”

To protect people’s freedom is to limit the power of the government. The idea of “limited government” is the foundation of freedom.

People should not, in the words of Ben Shapiro, “become accustomed to the government taking care of them.” It seems like a nice idea, but throughout history, it has led only to dictatorships and atrocities.

There is a choice: people can have freedom, or they can have a government which reaches into their lives and tries to help them. They cannot have both. Solutions to social problems come from society, not from the government. Solutions to economic problems come from businesses and economists, not from the government.

If people mistakenly believe that the government can fix problems, then that belief “leads to calls for government action with every supposed crisis,” as Ben Shapiro says. He continues:

If we want to restore logical boundaries to government, we can begin by restoring logical boundaries to our desire to rely on the government. To do that, however, we must first understand how the government currently works. Here’s a hint: it has almost nothing to do with the Constitution.

Consider how our government currently works, how it worked in the past, and how it might work in the future.

Again, people from nearly every political viewpoint, from every race, from every religion, all agree — the government isn’t working well at present. That’s because, as Shapiro points out, the government currently has little to do with the Constitution.

While nearly every elected or appointed political leader will quote from the Constitution and praise it, in reality, the organizational mechanisms of the Constitution are routinely ignored.

When the Constitutional system is working properly, it does things like end slavery, as it did between 1863 and 1865, or ensure women’s right to vote, as it did in 1869, long before the amendment confirmed it in 1920.

So what does it mean for the Constitutional system to work properly? What does that look like? A big part of the answer is the “separation of powers.”

Each part of the government has its own assignment to do. The legislature, or Congress, is supposed to make laws. The executive, or president, is supposed to apply the laws. The judiciary, or court system, is supposed to interpret the laws.

Yes, it gets a little more complex than that in some situations, but the basic principle of “separation of powers” is this simple principle.

Things go wrong when the executive branch makes laws. For example, the president appoints people to operate government agencies, like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) or Department of Commerce. When those agencies start making their own rules and policies, instead of applying the laws which Congress has made, then there is a problem. They have effectively taken Congress’s job. There is a name for this problem: “administrative law.” It’s when the administration, instead of the Congress, makes laws.

Another way things can go wrong is this: The legislative branch can usurp the role of the executive branch. This happens when Congress has hearings and investigations. While it is appropriate for Congress to hold committee meetings and to gather facts relevant to debates about potential legislation, it is not appropriate for Congress to investigate (that’s a task for the executive branch), and it is not appropriate for Congress to hold hearings (that’s the work of the judicial branch). The one rare exception is an impeachment process for a federal employee.

Many of our current problems arise from the fact that the three branches of government are not restricting themselves to their assigned tasks. If each branch of government will do its work, and not the work of the other branches, then many of our problems will be solved, and desired outcomes like freedom, prosperity, justice, and peace are more likely.