The Development of Islamo-Socialism from 1953 to 2026: Yousef Rabhi, Zohran Mamdani, and Abdul El-Sayed

In October 1953, Bernard Lewis gave a speech in which he proposed “to see how far Islam and Communism are compatible.” This speech, printed as an article in International Affairs in 1954, considered how far “Islam predisposes those who have been brought up in it to accept or reject the Communist teaching.”

Lewis explored these thoughts in the context of the Cold War in its 1950s stage. He did not examine Communism as an abstract concept or set of concepts, but rather as the concrete reality of Soviet Socialism. The transition from Stalin to Khrushchev had indeed led to some detectable changes in policy and practice, but the core ideology and goals of Soviet Socialism remained unchanged.

Among those goals was the spread of Socialism throughout the world.

The Soviet Socialists were, in fact, actively engaged in attempting to introduce Socialism into majority-Muslim nations, not by starting a dramatic violent rebellion and overthrow of the governments in those lands, but rather by a more subtle and gradual approach. This diplomatic approach included economic assistance, military assistance, technical assistance, propaganda aimed at anti-colonial nationalism, support for local communist parties, educational exchanges, and cultural diplomacy.

Recipients of Soviet Socialist aid included Egypt, Syria, Afghanistan, and after 1958 Iraq. Socialist propaganda hoped to reframe anticolonialism and antiimperialism as opposition to market economies and opposition to property rights. The Soviets offered overt and covert support to Communist parties in Iran, Indonesia, Syria, and Iraq.

While these Soviet efforts led to improved diplomatic relations with some Islamic states, because of mutually beneficial arrangements, these efforts did not lead to a large-scale embrace of Soviet Socialism in Muslim-majority nations. In 1953 and 1954, however, this result was not yet known, and the non-Communist nations were concerned about the possibility of Islamic republics joining the Warsaw Pact nations.

On the one hand, the free world sought comfort in the notion that “Islam is after all a religion based on revelation, belief in which is clearly incompatible with Marxist ideology,” as Bernard Lewis phrases it. Anyone who has carefully studied Islam and carefully studied Marxism will agree that the two are irreconcilable. But that degree of study and analysis will be limited to a few lonely academic souls.

On the other hand, “in the present competition between the Western democracies and Soviet Communism for the support of the Islamic world,” there might be “factors or qualities” present “in Islamic tradition, or in the present state of Islamic society and opinion, which might prepare the intellectually and politically active groups to embrace Communist principles and methods of government, and the rest to accept them.”

Rather than compare and contrast Marxist-Leninist doctrine to Islamic theology, Lewis is asking whether, in the street-level reality of the majority-Muslim nations, there were significant numbers of people, and especially influential people, who might embrace Soviet Socialism, and whether the masses would be willing to follow them. He is arguing that it is not a theological or philosophical question, it is a social and political question.

The Soviet Socialist diplomatic outreach to Islamic nations included educational exchanges, in which Muslim students were invited to study at universities in the Soviet Union. The diplomacy also included cultural exhibitions, scientific exchanges, athletic competitions, and publications and radio broadcasts in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu, and Indonesian. Soviet diplomats also assured Islamic leaders that the Soviets respected religious freedom; the Soviets knew that the Muslim nations would not accept the absolute atheism demanded by doctrinaire Marxism. This put the Soviets in the awkward position of praising religious freedom abroad while imposing atheism domestically.

In the end, the Soviet Socialists formed some mutually advantageous alliances with Islamic republics, but there was no flowering of Socialism in the Muslim world in the 1950s.

By the time of the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the reader will imagine that the foreign policy experts in the free world were thankful that, despite some military and economic cooperation between a few Islamic nations and the Soviet Union, there had been no massive wave of revolutionary Soviet Socialism in those countries.

Although the West may well have felt a sense of relief in 1991, it would have been surprised and disappointed to learn that, 35 years later, phrases like ‘Islamo-Socialism,’ ‘Islamo-Marxism,’ and ‘Islamo-Communism’ would be used with increasing frequency to describe events, movements, and political leaders in the United States.

Although the Soviet Union is long gone, the ghost of Soviet Socialism is alive and well in Zohran Mamdani, Abdul El-Sayed, and Yousef Rabhi. Although only two of those three are currently official members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), all three of them propose policies which are directly derived from Soviet Socialism: government owned housing, not as an emergency safety net, but as an ongoing way of life for a large percentage of the citizenry; government owned and operated grocery stores; free use of public transportation for everyone. (Of the three, the one who is not a member of the DSA has nonetheless spoken at and otherwise attended DSA events.)

One could cite many other examples of how policies advocated by Islamo-Socialists are echoes of Soviet Socialism’s policies. The three political leaders named above are not alone; they are merely the most famous of their type in the year 2026. Preceding years have featured others, and in 2026 there are many others as well. One can anticipate more of the same in 2027. (Although Yousef Rabhi does not label himself a Muslim, he has not expressed any critique of Islam; his father's family is Muslim, and one can reasonably assume that he has a familiarity with Islam.)

The notion of rephrasing 1950s Soviet policies in ways to make them palatable to Islamists of the 2020s almost seems like a comedy skit from Saturday Night Live.

An “Islamist” is not the same as a “Muslim” in twenty-first century usage. The current wave of Islamo-Socialism in the United States devotes effort to avoid appearing Islamist.

What is Islamo-Socialism? And what is it in contrast to other versions of Socialism? As noted above, one aspect of it is its presentation. It places less emphasis on the Marxist demand for atheism. It leans more heavily on the authoritarian nature of the state to impose whichever Socialist or Communist measures are being taken at the time.

Bernard Lewis identifies three features of Islam which the Socialists can leverage.

First, “the Communists are against the West and for that reason can at once count on important elements of support in the Islamic world.” What Lewis probably did not foresee, in 1953, was that this would not take place by means of Soviet propaganda efforts in Islamic nations, but rather that it would take place in the West itself — in NATO and EU countries — by means of ideologues who outlived the Soviet Union but remain attached to its doctrines.

Second, Lewis wondered if the Soviets could exploit “the present discontent of the Islamic World, and more specifically the social and economic discontent.” Again, while the Soviets of the 1950s failed to integrate the Islamic world into the Warsaw Pact, 70 years later, the doctrinaire Marxists in the West have been able to lure a substantial segment of Muslims into the Socialist camp.

Third, Lewis points out that a sweeping generalization about all Muslims is wrong. There is a particular segment of the Muslim world which will be drawn into Socialism, and there are other segments who will remain independent of it:

The center of danger is not the starving peasantry so often referred to, but rather the aspiring mechanics, who are the main recruits to the Communist cause. The peasantry are still, to a large extent, integrated in their traditional social units, and sustained by the loyalty and cohesion of the family and village group. It is the semi-skilled or un-skilled laborers who are uprooted from their tribal and village communities, deprived of the support of their usual system of social relationships and mutual aid, and placed in alien and unfamiliar surroundings. In the Communist cell the transplanted proletarian or mechanic may hope to find some substitute for his lost social armature, as well as encouragement in the ambitions and resentments that he acquires together with his new skills.

With a few adjustments in wording, this text by Bernard Lewis translates neatly into the twenty-first century. The “peasantry” and its “village communities” are the immigrants, who’ve settled in Europe or North America, and have a sense of “loyalty and cohesion” and “social relationships and mutual aid.” These people are sustained by “their traditional social units” and are not seeking a new sense of home among the political radicals of the far Left.

On the other hand, those Muslims who are suffering from a sense of dislocation, culturally, linguistically, and religiously, are attracted to Islamo-Socialism, because they have been “uprooted from their” communities and “deprived of the support” of those communities. Being culturally, socially, and psychologically dislocated, they find themselves “in alien and unfamiliar surroundings.” This could apply not only to immigrants, but also to the children of immigrants, and perhaps even to the grandchildren. Being distant, either emotionally or geographically, from family is another source of dislocation which makes individuals susceptible to the lures of Islamo-Socialism.

How does Islamo-Socialism cooperate or coordinate with its political allies? The DSA and other socialist-leaning groups in the United States include a wide smorgasbord of ethnicities, religions, and cultures. Consolidating such coalitions is an important part of twenty-first century electioneering in the United States (and perhaps in other countries as well).

One feature of postmodern and post-Marxist socialisms (note the plural) is the abandonment of the strictly economic definitions of the classes to be liberated. Socialism is to liberate not only those with little or no income, little or no capital, and low standards of living, but also those who are in any way oppressed — with the definition of ‘oppressed’ being large, malleable, and ever-changing.

The Islamo-Socialists can find common ground with the other socialists by identifying some people (their supporters) as oppressed, and labelling other people (their political opponents) as oppressors.

Another vocabulary item which connects Islamo-Socialists with the broader Marxist audience — and for the present purposes, the ambiguous borderlines between socialism, marxism, communism, leninism, and maoism may be ignored — is the phrase “seize the means of production.”

This is an orthodox Marxist phrase, and Zohran Mamdani is clearly documented as saying that one of the “issues that we firmly believe in” is the “end goal” was “seizing the means of production.” This phrase cements Mamdani’s place in the socialist camp. It also is a phrase that would have been, until very recently, unlikely to come out of the mouth of a self-identified Muslim.

The confusion and conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism is another bridge which links Islamo-Socialism to the broader far-Left community. On the one hand, there is opposition to particular actions and policies of the nation-state of Israel. On the other hand, there is a desire to discriminate against Jews around the globe. The refusal to distinguish between these two ideas allows for a connection between Islamo-socialism and DSA-type movements.

Any variant of socialism requires a reduction in personal freedom and political liberty: an ongoing diminution of property rights and free markets. Both socialism and Islam are quite comfortable with regulating both individuals and communities, as Bernard Lewis writes:

Many attempts have been made to show that Islam and democracy are identical-attempts usually based on a misunderstanding of Islam or democracy or both.

Lewis reviews the societies and civilization in which Islam has flourished. Almost none of them feature governments composed of freely-elected representatives. Almost none of them encourage individual expression or thought. Culturally, Islam has learned to feel at home in authoritarianism and in absolutism. Islam is therefore comfortable when socialism restricts property rights and regulates a previously free market. Lewis continues:

The political history of Islam is one of almost unrelieved autocracy. I say autocracy, not despotism, since the sovereign was bound by and subject to the Holy Law, and was accepted by the people as rightful ruler, maintaining and maintained by the authority of the Holy Law. But still, it was authoritarian, often arbitrary, sometimes tyrannical. There are no parliaments or representative assemblies of any kind, no councils or communes, no chambers of nobility or estates, no municipalities in the history of Islam; nothing but the sovereign power.

It appears clear that Islam will not in the near future articulate, embrace, and endorse the principles of Soviet Socialism; atheism and a few other cultural details are not palatable to Islam.

It also seems apparent that Islam is comfortable enough with Soviet Socialism, especially in its current DSA repackaging, to tolerate it, to coexist with it, to go along and get along with it.

Islam and Soviet Socialism are not entirely congruent, but they are in some ways similar and in some ways complementary, so that they can collaborate.

The Separation of Powers and the United States Constitution in the Late Twentieth and Early Twenty-First Centuries: Can It Be Revived?

Although no longer universally taught, the Constitution of the United States is still presented to students in at least some American schools, both public and private. Both formerly, when it was widely taught, or presently, when it has become optional in many curricula, the relatively simple concept of the “separation of powers” among the three branches of government, related to their ability to “check and balance” each other, was a central component in teaching about the Constitution.

The concept is simple: as the saying goes, simple but not easy.

It is not the fault of parents or teachers that inadequate education about the Constitution is often now given. Curriculum creators (textbook writers) and professors of education at the colleges and universities have planned and carried out the deliberate withholding of information. Instead of teaching the Constitution, a handful of slogans are instilled in the students, with the intent of persuading parents and students that something has been taught and learned.

Given this failure of the academic system, mainly at the primary and secondary levels, the general public is less able to identify when the government fails to abide by the Constitution’s rule, less able to know what to do to correct these failures, and less able to understand the harm wrought by the violation of the Constitutional system.

One specific violation of the system is that laws are being made by branches of the government other than the Congress. If the task of the legislative branch is to legislate, then it is a violation not only of reason and justice, but also of the Constitution, when some other, or any other, office legislates. An effort is made to camouflage this violation inasmuch as the laws so made are not called ‘laws’ but rather ‘regulations, rules, procedures, rulings’ etc., and the unconstitutional process of making them is not called ‘legislation’ but rather ‘oversight, regulation, court orders’ etc.

Some scholars have sought to justify this violation of the Constitution by arguing that Congress has delegated its law-making activity when, e.g., it funds an agency or an executive department which then issues regulations, rulings, procedures, etc.

As historian Philip Hamburger points out, the Constitution expressly forbids Congress from delegating the power of legislation:

The United States Constitution expressly bars the delegation of legislative power. This may sound odd, given that the opposite is so commonly asserted by scholars and so routinely accepted by the courts. But read the Constitution. The Constitution’s very first substantive words are, “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States.” The word “all” was not placed there by accident. The Framers understood that delegation had been a problem in English constitutional history, and the word “all” was placed there precisely to bar it.

The Constitution was directly and specifically responding to historical situations in which the legislative branch had delegated its power to legislate; the result was another step on the road to tyranny. The crime of the legislative branch delegating its power is distinct from the crime of some other branch of government taking that power. In either situation, however, injustice and human suffering are the necessary results.

Constitutionally, the legislative branch cannot delegate this power; when it does, it ceases to be a constitutional legislature, as historian John Marini notes:

It is true that constitutional assemblies cannot be bureaucratized, because deliberation and general lawmaking remain their fundamental political purpose.

The first generations of constitutional scholars assumed that if Congress delegated its power to legislate, it would lose all its power. “What” earlier historians “did not foresee is that Congress could surrender its lawmaking power, delegating that power to the bureaucracy, and still maintain its authority over the bureaucracy.” Congress, having in fact illegitimately delegated, retains significant power, i.e., the political power over the agencies which legislate. But Congress has given away its direct power over, and its responsibility for, the content of legislation.

One name given to laws made not by the legislative branch is ‘administrative’ law, i.e., illegitimate law, which hides behind any word except ‘law’ — i.e., ‘regulation, requirement, directive, procedure, guideline’ etc.

Congress still has power, but not its legitimate power. It holds a form of illegitimate power, as John Marini writes:

It is in this way — by reorganizing itself to be not a legislative, but an administrative oversight body — that Congress established itself as a major player in the politics of the administrative state.

Many harms arise from the delegation of Congress’s peculiar constitutional role. As a natural consequence to laws made in violation of the Constitution, the enforcement of those laws, and the judging of them, is also in violation of the Constitution. Thus ‘administrative law’ begets an ‘administrative court’ system, and even what are essentially ‘administrative’ police. Again, these will be hidden behind other names, to disguise the violation of constitutional principles.

Those who face trial in an administrative ‘hearing’ do not receive due process and their rights are not respected — the rights which they would have were they to be tried in a court which is part of the judicial branch. Philip Hamburger explains:

Administrative adjudication evades almost all of the procedural rights guaranteed under the Constitution. It subjects Americans to adjudication without real judges, without juries, without grand juries, without full protection against self-incrimination, and so forth.

It is not accidental that ‘administrative courts’ ignore the rights which a citizen normally has in a constitutional trial and violate due process, because it was with that intent that the administrative courts were created. The formation of ‘courts’ and ‘hearings’ within departments of the executive branch and within congressional agencies was a successful effort to evade proper judicial procedure, by evading the judicial branch itself.

Phrases like “an ICC ruling” or “an ICC finding” describe the result of an essentially judicial process, but one not carried out by the judicial branch. For example, the New York Times wrote about “an Interstate Commerce Commission finding of last April that a merger of the Great Northern, the Northern Pacific and the Chicago, Burlington Quincy Railroads is in the public interest” (November 21, 1968). What is that but a verdict? Yet nobody but the judicial branch is constitutionally authorized to issue a verdict.

Philip Hamburger reports:

Administrative courts substitute inquisitorial process for the due process of law — and that’s not just an abstract accusation; much early administrative procedure appears to have been modelled on civilian-derived inquisitorial process. Administrative adjudication thus becomes an open avenue for evasion of the Bill of Rights.

Congress has delegated its legislative power, and thus abandoned its legitimate constitutional role. Why would a body surrender its proper power? Perhaps to obtain an improper power. Congress is now less concerned with passing laws, and more concerned with conducting ‘investigations’ and having ‘trials’ and ‘hearings’ of various kinds.

Congress has not only violated the Constitution, it has inverted it, as John Marini explains:

Congress has become a major player in the administrative state precisely by surrendering its constitutional purpose and ceasing to defend limited government. As a result, the administrative state has grown dramatically since 1965, and it only continues to defend and expand its turf. Political opposition occasionally arises in the White House or in Congress, but thus far with little effect.

In violating the separation of powers between the three branches of government and hindering the proper ‘check and balance’ system, Congress has not only violated the Constitution and reason, but also thwarted the nation’s desire for justice, freedom, peace, and prosperity.

Bull Connor: A Career of Opposition to Civil Rights

The name of Bull Connor is familiar to anyone who’s learned about the struggle for civil rights in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. His legal name was Theophilus Eugene Connor, but the nickname “Bull” was given to him early in life, and it stuck. He was born in 1897.

After a brief career in radio, he found success in politics. “In a race for a seat in the Alabama Legislature,” writes the New York Times, “Mr. Connor won handily in the Democratic primary.”

“In 1934, Connor entered the Democratic primary race for a seat in the Alabama House of Representatives,” writes historian James Baggett, and “Connor served in the legislature from 1935 to 1937, and introduced and championed bills, such as poll tax reform.” His party’s majority in the legislature used the “poll tax” to deter African-Americans from voting.

His career proceeded as he was elected to be Birmingham’s commissioner of public safety, a position he held from 1936 to 1952, and again from 1956 to 1963. It was during his time in this office that he ordered the use of firehoses against peaceful demonstrators in May 1963. This iconic moment cemented Bull Connor’s name and reputation in the mind of the public. He also authorized the use of dogs against the demonstrators.

In addition to his role in the Birmingham city government, he was involved in national politics. He was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention several times: sources are unclear about exactly how many times he attended the convention, and which times he was a delegate, as compared to which times he served in other roles at the convention.

Given the conflicting sources, it is clear that he was elected as a delegate to the convention at least four times, and possibly as many as seven times. It is clear that he was a delegate at the convention in 1948 and 1956.

Records are not complete, but indicate his presence at the convention in 1940, 1944, 1960, 1964, and 1968, in addition to the 1948 and 1956 conventions, whether as a delegate or in some other capacity.

Between national conventions, Bull Connor was a member of the Democratic National Committee between 1960 and 1963. Evidence suggests that he was present at meetings as a non-member guest at times before and after his actual membership in the Democratic National Committee

“Connor served as a delegate to four Democratic National Conventions (1948, 1956, 1964, and 1968),” writes historian James Baggett. “At the 1948 convention, he helped lead a walkout by” a group of “delegates in protest of Pres. Harry S. Truman’s civil rights policies.”

Truman’s famous Executive Order 9981 ordered the desegregation of the military, although the order was carefully worded in a way such that it did not create the change it seemed to demand. Still, it was abhorrent to large numbers of Democrats, who refused to vote for Truman. Truman won the 1948 election anyway.

Bull Connor remained influential in the party, so much so that he outperformed nine other candidates in the primary election for governor. The eventual candidate outperformed him. “In 1950, Connor ran unsuccessfully for governor and then returned to his work as a commissioner.” He held the commissioner office and was reelected several times. After a brief hiatus, “he was voted back onto the commission in 1957. In 1960, Connor was elected Alabama’s Democratic National Committeeman, and” in “1962 he ran another unsuccessful campaign for governor.”

Historians will note the inaccuracies, ambiguities, and incompletenesses in the various source documents. It should not be so difficult to determine when and how often an individual was an official party delegate to a convention!

It is noteworthy that even after the iconic images of dogs and fire hoses being used without provocation against peaceful demonstrators, Bull Connor retained a powerful base of support within his party, being nominated for various elected public offices, and holding leadership roles inside the party.

By the mid 1960s, he had retired from politics, and died in 1973.

How Ronald Reagan Became a Policy Wonk

From the time that Ronald Reagan announced his candidacy in November 1979, observers noted that he when he was speaking in unscripted situations, like press conferences or debates, he was able to quickly articulate lines of reasoning, show a familiarity with a variety of topics and situations, and nimbly explain and apply a variety of concepts.

Those who were competing against Reagan admitted that he could speak with ease even in improvised situations. This was clear, despite an effort by some of his opponents to paint him either as a shallow Hollywood movie star or as an incompetent grandfather. Reagan was able to discuss policy at a fairly sophisticated level without focused preparation. He retrieved facts and concepts on the fly from his memory.

How did Reagan become so well versed?

It happened during a four-and-a-half year period, during which Reagan was not in office and was not seeking any office. He spent that time writing and speaking, and most importantly, preparing his own texts for these written and spoken engagements.

He wrote the texts for more than one thousand three-minute radio speeches. They were broadcast daily, Monday through Friday, from early 1975 until late 1979. He also wrote newspaper columns. Like any content creator, he was actively seeking new material. He read in large quantities, from daily newspapers to centuries-old classics. He was continually on the lookout for new ideas, new facts, and new perspectives on old ideas and on old facts. As historian Kiron Skinner said, “Reagan really was doing his own work.”

In the course of researching and writing, Reagan became familiar with dozens of policy topics, and with multiple interpretations of each of those topics. His grasp on the issues was both broader and deeper than many of his competitors when he ran in the 1980 election.

“The scripts deal with every issue of the day, from stagflation to Soviet duplicity,” writes Peter Robinson. “We now know that he produced more original writing than any president since Woodrow Wilson.”

Among broadcasters, Reagan’s radio audience was considered to be among the largest, explains Kiron Skinner:

So, in January 1975, he steps down as governor of California, and three days later he’s writing radio essays, giving radio broadcasts five days a week, three minutes a day, to about 20 million listeners. He did this before talk-radio, when no one else in the country was doing what he was doing. He had a bigger listening audience probably than any politician in the United States, including the president, and no one in the establishment — the liberal establishment — paid attention. He was on more than 300 radio stations across the country, nationally syndicated. He would go into a studio in Hollywood and record 15 [broadcasts] at a time, covering three weeks at a time, and with doing only one recording, never making a mistake, having written most of them by hand. He delivered more than a thousand in the late 70s, and when he competed in the 1980 Republican primary, his challengers said that everywhere they went the audience knew Reagan’s message and they knew him. Well, [the reason] was the radio essays that he’d been giving all of those years.

By the time Reagan began his daily radio speeches in 1975, he’d already been governor of California and a Hollywood actor. He already had experience as a radio broadcaster, a job which he held from 1932 to 1936.

He was already an accomplished public speaker by 1975. The additional years on the radio only made him better. He preferred speaking to writing, because he understood better how to connect with his audience using his voice instead of his pen, as Kiron Skinner notes:

He also wrote a nationally syndicated weekly newspaper column with King Syndicate, but he really focused on radio, because he understood the medium, having been a sportscaster in Iowa after college.

Approximately 600, or a few more, of his original radio scripts have survived. They are almost all handwritten. Reagan would give the handwritten copies to a secretary to be typed. They offer insights into both the methods and the circumstances of their composition.

More than his immediate predecessors — Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter — Reagan had polished skills in public speaking, and an instinct for broadcast media, both radio and television.

He had an amazing audience. He was talking to Americans, he was receiving letters back, refining his message, honing his skills, developing arguments, so that by 1980, when he was running against Jimmy Carter, he was functioning as a one-man think-tank. The radio essays [covered] every issue. He wrote most of them entirely by himself. He was writing them on planes, from the back of cars. He was even citing his sources in the margins of the handwritten drafts.

Although Reagan certainly earned his nickname — ‘The Great Communicator’ — that was only half the story. The other half was his vast mental library of issues and policies, and his ability to deftly explain, apply, critique, or support them. In the vocabulary of a much later era, he was The Great Content Generator.

Reagan’s Foreign Policy: The Origins of “Peace Through Strength”

Which role did treaties play in Reagan’s conceptualization of foreign policy? How did Reagan orchestrate a peaceful ending to the Cold War, avoiding direct military conflict between the United States and the USSR?

The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California houses millions of pages of documents from Reagan’s time as president. He was in office from January 1981 to January 1989. The library also contains some materials from the times before and after his terms in office.

Dr. Kiron Skinner, a professor and researcher, was granted access to some of the documents which are not normally available to the public. She spent several years reading thousands of pages, wrote books and articles fueled by that reading, and has become known as a scholar specializing in, among other topics, Reagan’s presidency.

In a 2012 interview, which was subsequently transcribed for print, she noted that “Reagan was deeply influenced by” a book written by Laurence Beilenson and titled The Treaty Trap. Beilenson argues that in the long run, treaties have little value or effect, although in the short run, they can be useful as two or more nations grope and fumble their way toward an equilibrium.

Reagan was not averse to signing treaties, but he had no illusions that these treaties by themselves would create a stable equilibrium in global diplomacy or institute a new world order. He signed significant treaties, including the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) in 1987, the Threshold Test Ban Treaty (TTBT) in 1988, the Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Treaty (PNET) in 1988, the Montreal Protocol in 1987, and the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement in 1988.

Two of those treaties, the TTBT and the PNET, were already negotiated and signed by previous presidents, but Reagan re-negotiated them, adding verification protocols.

In addition to signing those treaties, he negotiated and drafted the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I), the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE), and the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), all three of which would be signed by subsequent presidents.

But Reagan did not view these treaties as creating a stable equilibrium between the United States and the USSR. Instead, he saw them as milestones or timing tactics toward such an equilibrium. Ultimately economic and military realities, not words on paper, would create an equilibrium and thereby peace.

This understanding of the nature of treaties marked a difference between the U.S. foreign policy in the 1970s and the U.S. foreign policy in the 1980s, as Kiron Skinner writes:

An attorney named Laurence Beilenson found that every treaty that has been signed throughout world history has been violated. That really influenced Reagan because he felt that treaties were not the goal; [rather] the objective should be to transform the international system by the strength of the United States as the predominant power in the world. He had a very different view than the prevailing view in the 1970s, the period of détente when, under Nixon and Kissinger, the United States accepted the Soviet Union and believed that the Cold War was an enduring bipolar system that would last ad infinitum. Reagan didn’t feel that way. He didn’t feel that treaties — that is, signing treaties codifying the Soviet status in the world — was something the U.S. ought to be doing. The principle behind [his thinking] was right: treaties aren’t the way to get countries to change.

Because Reagan saw the economic and military realities as primary to shaping international cooperation and the global balance of power, and treaties as secondary, he used the phrase “peace through strength” to describe his policy. The phrase had previously been used for decades both in Britain and in the United States, but is now mostly associated with Reagan’s policies.

Reagan conceptualized this policy with four major points. First, that the USSR drew most or all of its leverage from its military occupation of eastern Europe and was otherwise rather weak; second, that the Soviet economy was weak, and the U.S. could topple it by placing competitive stress on it; third, that the U.S. economy was strong enough to place massive stress on the Soviet economy; fourth, that the U.S. citizenry would accept a massive military buildup if it understood that the buildup was not intended to start a war, but rather to avoid one.

The goal of “peace through strength” was a peaceful end to the Cold War brought about by causing the Soviet economy to collapse, as Kiron Skinner said:

When he talked about peace through strength he meant four very theoretical hypotheses: One was that the full force of legitimacy of the Soviet Union in the Cold War was the Red Army’s occupation of Eastern Europe. Pull the Red Army out, and the countries would go their own way. That’s really what happened after 1989.

Second, that the Soviet economy was so weak that it could not sustain a technology race with the United States. [Reagan] was saying this in the 1970s, and [it was] heresy. No one believed it. Many, including some in our intelligence community, felt the Soviet Union could go on for decades.

Third, [Reagan] argued that the American economy was so strong that it could sustain a technology race with the Soviets and recover even if there was some deficit spending.

And then, finally, Reagan argued that the American public was prepared for peace through strength. It was prepared for massive peacetime rearmament — if, in fact, leaders would explain that rearmament was part of a strategy for a very different goal, which was mutual cooperation on our terms.

That, basically, I think, captures Reagan’s view of the Cold War and how it should be fought, and that’s what he meant by peace through strength. It was very clear what Ronald Reagan was saying. And no one else was saying it. He said it in the 70s and implemented it in the 1980s.

Reagan had a vision for what the world could, should, and would be after the end of the Cold War. This future would be based not on merely defeating the Soviet Socialists, but on changing Russia into a freedom-oriented nation: a “liberal” nation in the strict sense of the word. This freedom would be personal, economic, and political.

A Russia thus transformed could be a partner among the western European nations, the U.S., Canada, and the other countries which made up what was loosely called the “free world.” Reagan did not wish to subjugate Russia, but rather to make Russia into a teammate, as Kiron Skinner phrased it:

He wanted to get to a very different world. He wanted a world in which there was mutual cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union — he just defined mutual cooperation quite differently, which was the Soviets abdicating power and joining the West in a community of free states.

Reagan’s terms in office ended too early for him to be a part of shaping the post Cold War era, but he had this vision for it. He also envisioned a nuclear-free world. He reckoned that, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it would be a next logical step to completely disassemble the world’s nuclear arsenals. In the late 1980s, only the U.S. and the USSR had large nuclear stockpiles. Other nation-states had only small caches.

Determiners of Black Social Success

The sociological and demographic patterns of African-American society from the 1860s to the present provide data for complex narrative. The achievements made by Blacks in the United States after the end of slavery are impressive. Those achievements were made in the face of significant obstacles.

Robert Leon Woodson describes the advances of African-Americans over the course of their first century of freedom:

The core of the black community in the hundred years between the end of the Civil War and the War on Poverty was the family, a belief in God and business formation. Up until 1965, the marriage rate for blacks was over 80 percent. In fact, during the Great Depression, the black marriage rate was higher than that of whites. In the first 50 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, black Americans accumulated a personal wealth of $700 million. They owned over 40,000 businesses, 40,000 churches and 937,000 farms. The literacy rate climbed from five to 70 percent.

Woodson focuses on the connection between family structures, education, and economic success. In 2005 he wrote:

Out-of-wedlock births dramatically increased, particularly in the black community. In 1962, 85 percent of all black families had a man and a woman raising a family. Today, about only 47 percent of homes have a married man and woman raising children.

Since Woodson wrote those words in 2005, the situation has not improved.

Children born to unmarried parents are more likely to underperform educationally, be unemployed or underemployed as adults, abuse substances, and commit crimes than children born to intact families. Woodson points out that anti-poverty policies have unwittingly incentivized unmarried parents, and disincentivized marriage.

In the 1950s, when civil rights were finally being realized on a large scale, Blacks in the United States had statistics which compared favorably with Whites in terms of unemployment, literacy, and intact nuclear families. In some cases, Blacks even outperformed Whites by these measures. Yet within a few decades, these advances would be undone.

The improvements were on a large scale. Robert Leon Woodson notes the 57% decline in poverty rates among Blacks:

From 1940 to 1970 the poverty rate dropped from 87 to 30 percent — a reduction of two-thirds.

Yet since 1970, the poverty rate has stagnated. Federal anti-poverty policies have unintentionally undermined the stability of the family and undermined Black entrepreneurship. The programs collectively known as the “War on Poverty” became a “War for Poverty.”

What Madeleine Albright Wrote about Nicolas Maduro

Madeleine Albright is most known for her tenure as Secretary of State during the Clinton administration. She served in this capacity from January 1997 to January 2001.

Her influence on global diplomacy and presidential policy continued long after she left office. She advised President Obama, President Biden, and a long list of diplomats in the State Department.

She was active in shaping foreign policy until shortly before her death in 2022. Worth noting is the development of her view of Nicolas Maduro between 2018 and 2021.

In 2018, Albright had a dim view of Maduro, but still considered him someone to be treated by means of diplomacy. She wrote:

Chavez intended to be president for life, and he was, but disease cut the dream short. The Venezuela he left behind is poorer than in 1999, when he took office. His successor, Nicolas Maduro, is rigidly ideological former bus driver and union boss who possesses every flaw but none of the virtues of the leader he replaced.

Albright recorded the disastrous economic policies of Maduro. While short-sighted and uninformed, and probably corrupt, his incompetence did not yet merit going beyond diplomacy.

The new president took the helm of an economy in rough waters and steered it toward Armageddon. To repay debts, he tapped the country’s financial reserves. Without reserves, Venezuela is hard-pressed to afford imports. Without imports, basic commodities are unavailable. The value of the national currency — the Bolivar fuerte — has declined to near zero, while the inflation rate is the world’s highest. The result is misery. Paychecks and pensions can no longer cover the cost of necessities; the price of a single tube of toothpaste is equal to half the average weekly income. Malnutrition is widespread. No matter how many pharmacies they visit, families are unable to obtain essential medicines. The minimum wage has been raised repeatedly but has failed to keep pace, stalling at about one-eighth the level in neighboring Colombia. Domestic production of coffee, rice, and corn has declined 60 percent. The country’s cattle herd is smaller by a third, and a decade and a half of squeezing the private sector has left the business community unable to supply basic needs.

If Maduro was to be arrested and taken into custody, then in 2018 it was to be done by the Venezuelan people. Aware of the diplomatic proprieties, Albright apparently thought that Maduro had not yet crossed the line which would precipitate his apprehension by U.S. authorities. It was still a domestic matter, to be dealt with by the Venezuelan system.

For months in early 2017, angry citizens took their grievances to the streets, shouting anti-Maduro slogans while trying to protect their bodies with bike helmets, cardboard shin guards, and homemade shields painted with the country’s colors of yellow, blue, and red.

There was no doubt that Maduro was liable for criminal charges and should face those charges in a Venezuelan court.

The president could have eased the crisis by admitting past mistakes and adopting policies to bring the country together. That would have caused foreign investors to take a fresh look at the situation and sparked regional and global initiatives to help. Instead, he doubled down on repression. To Maduro, one either tries to fulfill the Chavista revolution or betrays it — and he is a stubborn and unrepentant revolutionary. In July 2017, he engineered a referendum to replace the elected parliament with an all-powerful assembly of partisan puppets. Their job is to write a constitution to supplant the one Chavez wrote, which he predicted would last for centuries. At Maduro’s direction, major opposition parties have been banned, while political rivals and even some former allies have been locked up or forced into exile. When responding to street protests, security forces killed more than 120 civilians and roughed up and jailed thousands more. To ensure loyalty, the military and ex-military have taken over many government and private sector functions including the production of oil and the distribution of food.

In 2018, Albright expressed clearly that Maduro had lost all credibility. She dismisses his statements:

Maduro has refused to accept a shred of responsibility for the setbacks his country has endured. He blames every woe on domestic reactionaries and on “coup-mongering, power-grabbing … tendencies directed and governed by the United States.” This last charge was easy to dismiss.

According to Madeleine Albright, Maduro “has tried to nudge followers away from the consensus of support for democratic norms that required decades of struggle and sacrifice to build.”

Albright writes that Nicolas Maduro sees “access to high office not as a temporary privilege but as a means of imposing” his “own desires for as long as” he can. “In public statements,” Maduro displays “no interest in cooperation outside the specific groups” he purports “to speak for and represent.” He claims for himself “the mantle of ‘strong leader,’” and says that he speaks “for ‘the people.’”

By 2020, Albright had gone a step further. She is willing to question not only Maduro’s credibility, but even his legitimacy. In this, she joined the wider global diplomatic community. The EU and several dozen individual countries around the world declared Maduro’s government to be illegitimate.

According to Albright, Maduro is one “of a more contemporary breed of autocratic leaders.”

Maduro was elected in April 2014 and reelected in July 2024. International observers agreed that the elections were rigged. Madeleine Albright writes:

Those in charge of the process manipulated it to the favor of the incumbent. These were not fair elections.”

Two factors seem to have nudged Albright into a more prosecutorial stance against Maduro: First, when the EU and individual nations declared his rule to be illegitimate, he lost the claim to diplomatic immunity. Second, mounting evidence made it clear that he was engaged in criminal activity, i.e., being part of a drug cartel and promoting that cartel’s activities.

Maduro was no longer “probably” corrupt. Evidence confirmed that he was a leader in an international cartel, guilty of smuggling, racketeering, and a long list of other crimes. Given that the community of nations had declared his government to be illegitimate, he was no longer the object of diplomacy, but rather the object of law enforcement.

As early as 2015, when Albright was advising Obama, the U.S. government was gathering such evidence, as the Associated Press reports:

Nephews of Maduro’s wife were heard during recorded meetings with confidential U.S. government sources in 2015 agreeing to send “multi-hundred-kilogram cocaine shipments” from Maduro’s “presidential hanger” at a Venezuelan airport. The nephews during the recorded meetings explained “that they were at ‘war’ with the United States.”

As the case against Maduro became stronger, the Biden administration offered increasing rewards — up to $25 million — for information leading to the arrest of Maduro. It was the aim of the Biden administration to apprehend Maduro and take him into custody.

Given that Madeleine Albright’s work for the Biden administration was informal, confidential, and off-the-record, it is difficult to ascertain the exact degree of her involvement in the decision to seek Maduro’s capture. From her writings, it’s clear that her stance against Maduro was becoming more resolute. She was also in a position, given both her experience and her contacts in the global diplomatic community, to discern that other nations were confirmed in their view that Maduro’s government was illegitimate and that he was not entitled to diplomatic immunity.

In March 2021, Albright participated in a forum sponsored by the Aspen Institute. There was no live audience because of the pandemic, but the participants — government leaders and diplomats from several nations, of whom Albright was one — did meet live and in-person. There is no currently available record of the back-channel conversations which Albright might have had with these leaders, and whether Maduro was a topic in those conversations. Given the increasing amount of cocaine being smuggled into EU countries from Venezuela at that time, it is certainly possible that Maduro was a topic.

Amazingly, Albright was alert, lucid, and engaged in foreign policy conversations until shortly before her death in March 2022. At her funeral, in April of that year, President Biden said:

Presidents and leaders around the world continued to solicit her advice, including me. When I asked her last year to chair the Defense Policy Board, she built businesses. She pumped out New York Times bestsellers that were both highly prescient and deeply salient — and constantly bestsellers. I think I’ve read them all.

Albright, in unofficial capacity, would have been able to “send out feelers” to other nations to judge what kind of response the Biden administration would get when it put a bounty on Maduro’s head. Official State Department diplomats would not have been able to be as frank and direct as Albright could be, and they would not have the personal relationships, acquaintances, and friendships that Albright had. She was ideal for doing the kind of off-the-record communicating that the Biden administration would need to lay the groundwork for eventually offering a reward for Maduro’s capture.

KTVZ reported further comments that the president made at Albright’s funeral:

The President said Albright remained a “nexus of the foreign policy community” in the decades after she left office.

Albright, Biden said, was “always, and I mean always, on top of the latest developments. Always speaking out for democracy, and always the first to sound the alarm about fascism.”

The Biden administration offered large cash rewards for Maduro’s apprehension. If there is conclusive evidence that Albright was part of the decision-making leading to this offer, it has not been declassified or published yet. Given her status as the go-to foreign policy expert in the Clinton, Obama, and Biden administrations, and given her close and frequent communication with Biden, with State Department officials, and with the global diplomatic community, it is difficult to imagine that the administration did not ask her opinion on the idea of posting a reward for Maduro’s capture. Perhaps she was promoting the idea before her opinion of it could be asked.

An article in Sky News in August 2025 stated:

Under US President Donald Trump's predecessor Joe Biden, the offer went up to $25M — the same amount the US offered for the capture of Osama bin Laden following the 11 September 2001 attacks. Now it's doubled to $50M.

In January 2025, an A News article explained:

The US increased the reward for information leading to the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to $25 million on Friday as he was sworn in for a third term in office.

The Biden administration is also increasing the reward for information leading to the arrest of Venezuelan Interior and Justice Minister Diosdado Cabello to $25 million under the State Department's Narcotics Rewards Program, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby announced. A new $15 million reward is being offered for Defense Minister Vladimir Pedrino.

The Biden administration, during its entire four years, had Maduro in its sights, and gradually increased the dollar amount of the bounty on Maduro’s head. Biden’s clear objective was to arrest and incarcerate Maduro.

In her role as an advisor during both the Obama administration and the Biden administration, Madeleine Albright was not only aware of the effort to capture Maduro, but approved of it, and even espoused it.

The Word ‘Community’ in Contemporary Political Rhetoric

The vocabulary used by candidates, elected leaders, and the media changes over the decades, and is a good barometer of what people are thinking and how the power structure is attempting to influence the people’s thinking. In the process, the meaning of a word morphs and gets redesigned. This change in a word’s meaning may start as an intentional propaganda technique, but can and often does become subject to the normal linguistic processes which change a word’s meaning in an organic way: in a way which is no longer under the control of those who began the process.

Hovering in the background, as observers note the introduction of new vocabulary and note the changes in vocabulary’s style and popularity, is the linguistic distinction between prescriptive and descriptive definitions. The old and endless debate about the interplay between these two types of definitions comes to the fore as words are used, misused, and abused.

In the first quarter of the twenty-first century, one example is the word ‘community.’ For much of the twentieth century, this word, both prescriptively and descriptively, was in most cases understood to refer to a group of people who knew and interacted with each other on a frequent and regular basis: a small town or a neighborhood being the prime examples.

A change occurred when the word began to be applied to groups which were organized for the purpose of creating political or social pressure. These are social action groups or lobbying groups.

The next step was to apply this word to the people, usually cast as victims, whom the pressure groups allegedly represented. The news media reported on activists speaking about the “Black community” or the “African-American community.” In this way, the word came to refer to people who’d never met, and who were not even aware of each other’s existence. A 75-year-old multi-millionaire in Massachusetts and a 25-year-old receptionist at a dental practice in Los Angeles were thus part of the same “community.”

The semantic field of the word was stretched and distorted.

Marketing analysts began using phrases like “the wristwatch community” and “the mechanical pencil community.”

The word had come to be applied to large numbers of people who shared only one variable, and who had no knowledge of, or acquaintance with, each other: people who might be different from each other in many significant ways.

What is the effect arising from this change in a word’s usage? Why did this change come about? To speak of the “fountain pen community” — a subset of the “analog writing community” — is to attribute to the group a quality beyond the mere fact that all members share one common variable. The connotation or feel of the word is that these people share an identity and sense of belonging. The people who use these phrases don’t say that explicitly, and probably don’t even believe it; yet they use the phrase to create an impression in the mind of the reader or hearer: an impression that these people somehow are united.

The reader will consider the subtle difference between ‘Black people are … ’ and ‘the Black community is … ’ at the beginning of a sentence.

But, as in the earlier example, these people have only one variable in common, and that is a weak argument for alleging a sense of community among them. They have never met or communicated with each other, vote differently, worship differently, hold different moral standards, speak different languages, live and shop and play in different contexts, and have different educations and family structures. This is a “community” only if the definition of ‘community’ has been significantly changed.

It might be more accurate to speak of the “Black population” or the “Black demographic segment” in most situations. But it might lack the emotion and might fail to create the mental image in people’s minds — the emotion and image which lobbyists or activists find useful in promoting their causes.

Yet the organic growth of natural languages is inexorable, and won’t be contained, like Frankenstein’s monster, even by those who created such usages. Once the runaway use of the word ‘community’ started, it could not be stopped.

Which leads us to a November 2025 article in the Michigan Daily about a manicurist who posted photos of her work on social media: the article’s title included the phrase: “The Online Nail Community.”

Nixon in 1968: Assessing the Candidate

Some of the issues in the presidential election of 1968 are still relevant sixty years later: economics and equal opportunity. Other issues now belong primarily to the study of history: the Vietnam War and the Soviet Union are no more.

During the spring and summer, primary elections were held as the political parties considered their options for nominees. By the time the Republican National Convention began in Miami, the delegate counts were such that there was still no clear nominee. The leading candidates were Nixon, Reagan, and Nelson Rockefeller.

The media watched closely as the time for the first balloting neared. William F. Buckley offered analysis and commentary on the ABC network for primetime television. Although Reagan and Rockefeller worked energetically, the momentum among the delegates seemed to favor Nixon. But no candidate had the required number of delegates until shortly before the balloting.

Which ideas did the candidates represent? Rockefeller appealed to the wing of the Republican Party which can be labeled as “moderate” or “left-wing,” depending on who’s doing the labeling. Reagan and Nixon were ideologically similar to each other, to the extent that Reagan supported Nixon’s foreign policies in the early 1970s, and Nixon supported Reagan candidacy in 1980. The two conferred with each other when one of them was president.

Explaining Nixon on live TV, Buckley said:

This country has had the most phenomenal success of any country in the world in graduating people from poverty into affluence, and that graduation has been the result of economic and private activity, not government activity.

Buckley added: “Under the circumstances,” Nixon “wants to maintain those wellsprings of action.” According to Buckley, Nixon sees that giving people the freedom to act is the best way to create social mobility — a chance to move up — and therefore the best way to address issues like poverty and race relations.

The standard response to this view, then and now, is to point to inequality. In the twenty-first century, it has become common to focus on equity instead of equality, but few ordinary Americans, and even fewer in the media and in academia, can accurately express the distinction between the two concepts. In 1968, the word ‘equality’ was the operative word for such discussions.

Buckley presents the view that a government which usually refrains from intervention and regulation and a government which hesitates to create, fund, and sustain programs in response to social problems is the type of government which offers the best solutions to the problem of poverty. It offers chances and opportunities; it offers social mobility. But the standard response again points out that the result of Buckley’s proposal will not be equality. Under Buckley’s system, some people will have more and some will have less.

Buckley suggests that the goal is not equal status, but rather equal opportunity: This is the meaning of the twenty-first century’s distinction between ‘equality’ and ‘equity’ in political rhetoric.

Given equal opportunities, one person might decide to study engineering and another person might decide to study poetry. The engineer will probably earn more money than the person who analyzes poetry. Inequality is the result of unrestrained choices. In Buckley’s words:

Unless you have the freedom to be unequal there is no such thing as freedom. Every single person who owns a Ford car today is considered, by terms of international statistics, as being especially privileged. My point is that he worked to achieve it and that we ought to encourage a system which permits people like you and people like Mr. Smith and people like the technicians in this room to make progress. The fact that they make more progress than other people is not their fault nor is it the fault of other people. It’s the fault of freedom, but this I judge to be a price that we ought to be willing to pay in order to indulge the great animating force of progress in the world.

Having given the standard account of how a free society with a limited government creates opportunity for upward social mobility for those in the lower classes, Buckley turned to the general mood of the time. The year 1968 has been well documented for its chaos: student protests on university campuses, riots in cities, passionate and conflicting opinions about the Vietnam War and about race relations, increasing drug use, crime in the large cities, and other matters.

When asked what the presumptive nominee should say about the unstable ambience of the year, Buckley said:

I think the strongest line he could take is to face the people of the United States and say, “The reason, the principal reason, for the discontent of our time is because you have become encouraged by a demagogy of the left to believe that the federal government is going to take care of your life for you.” The answer is the federal government (a) can’t (b) shouldn’t (c) won’t. Under the circumstances look primarily to your own resources — spiritual, economic, and philosophical — and don’t look to the government to do it because the government is going to fail you.

Implicitly or explicitly, the notion was promulgated that the government is there to help people and there to solve problems. Having integrated this notion into their thinking and conception of life, people are radically disappointed when they discover that the government can’t, shouldn’t, and won’t fill the roles and complete the tasks which this notion assigns to it. This notion has been insinuated so pervasively that people assume in perhaps an almost subconscious way. Despite clear evidence that government is incapable of managing society, some people continue to insist that it do so.

So far, Buckley had described Nixon, who was not yet the party’s official nominee. The question poses itself: Is Buckley’s description accurate? Buckley’s description of Nixon seems quite similar to Buckley’s description of Buckley. Was this all wishful thinking? Was Buckley perceiving Nixon accurately? What would Nixon do and say if nominated? What would Nixon do and say if elected?

Buckley was offering analysis and commentary during the Republican National Convention in August 1968. His description of Nixon at that time contained a degree of ideological purity and consistency which one might expect in an abstraction, but not in a living flesh-and-blood candidate, who had to include in his calculations both the sometimes self-contradictory desires of the voters and the complexity of national and international circumstances.

In point of fact, the convention selected Nixon to be the nominee, and the voters chose Nixon. Buckley backed Nixon, mainly because Nixon was preferable to Hubert Humphrey, the nominee of the Democratic Party.

After the Republican National Convention, the Democrats had nominated Humphrey at their convention in Chicago in August 1968. He was committed to keeping the United States in the Vietnam War. The war was becoming increasingly unpopular, and the Democrats chose to take a pro-war stance. There was significant anti-war sentiment, even within the Democratic Party.

With Nixon, the Republicans had an anti-war candidate. One of his standard slogans during the campaign was: “I pledge to you that we shall have an honorable end to the war in Vietnam.”

Humphrey would work to continue the war; Nixon would work to end it. In fact, he did end the Vietnam War, and ended the military draft.

In other ways, however, Nixon did not perform as Buckley hoped.

Buckley considered Nixon too much of a pragmatist or opportunist rather than a pure free-market ideologist. Nixon’s “wage and price controls” in 1971 was a clear violation of free market principles. Buckley opposed the controls fiercely.

Nixon created the EPA, and embraced the “Philadelphia Plan” which was an early version of affirmative action. Buckley saw this as an abandonment of the principle of limited government, and felt that Nixon lacked convictions.

Despite these and other disappointments with Nixon, Buckley endorsed him in 1968, and again in 1972, as a tactical move against other candidates.

Reasons to Be Cheerful — Part 7

There are things in this world for which one can be thankful. To be sure, there is also misery and suffering in this world. The presence of the latter does not negate the reality or efficacy of the former.

Nicholas Kristof, in a January 2025 piece in the New York Times, writes that even in a “messed-up world, many trends are still going right.” He notes that people want “reassurance” and this can be had by “putting grim news in perspective,” i.e., by noting the significant good which is found in the world alongside the real evil.

Kristof begins by pointing to the lives of small children, who now routinely live past childhood and into adulthood. He reports that

2024 appears to have been the year in which the smallest percentage of children died since the dawn of humanity.

For most of history, about half of newborns died as children. As recently as 1950, more than one-quarter did. In 2024, the best guess of United Nations statisticians is that an all-time low of 3.6 percent of children died before the age of 5, a bit lower than in 2023 (which set the previous record).

That is still far too many. But the risk of that worst thing happening has dropped by half over the last quarter-century. Just since 2000, more than 80 million children’s lives have been saved.

What will be the quality of life for these many children whose lives have been preserved? Many of them will experience a higher quality of life than their parents and grandparents, as Kristof goes on to explains:

Consider extreme poverty, defined as having less than $2.15 per day, adjusted for inflation. Historically, most human beings lived in extreme poverty, but the share has been plummeting — and in 2024 reached a new low of about 8.5 percent of the world’s people.

Another way of looking at it: Every day over the past couple of years, roughly 30,000 people moved out of extreme poverty worldwide. And here’s something to look forward to: This year will probably register even more progress against child deaths and poverty alike.

Not only will the majority of these children escape extreme poverty, but rather they will also receive an education, a benefit which enriches life in many ways.

Of the many skills that a person can acquire, the ability to read and write is one of the strongest predictors for economic success, protection from exploitation, and personal development. Kristof reflects on the advancement of education during his own lifetime:

Education and literacy are the greatest forces empowering human beings, yet when I was a child, a majority of human beings had always been illiterate. Now we’re approaching 90 percent literacy worldwide, and the number of literate people is rising by more than 12 million each year. Every three seconds, another person becomes literate.

As these children reach adulthood, they will receive more healthcare than previous generations. Paradoxically, that means gaining weight in the third world while losing weight in the first world.

As nutrition improves in what is often called the ‘developing world,’ brain development, internal organs, and general health improve with it. Appropriate weight gain during the first few years of life is a predictor of good health for many years afterward.

In the industrialized world, a focus on nutrition and exercise is combating chronic excess body weight.

Both trends are salutary.

Other improvements in healthcare are in the offing. Kristof notes that

Scientists have newly developed the first antipsychotic medication for schizophrenia in decades, and a vaccine against a form of breast cancer may enter Phase 2 trials this year.

One must grieve the loss of life. In Ukraine, in various parts of the Middle East, and in the concentration camps in northwest China. These deaths are shocking and saddening.

Yet in comparison to the twentieth century, the world is becoming a safer place. Between 1900 and 2000, approximately 200 million people died in combat, working out to 50 million people per quarter century. So far, in the first quarter of the twenty-first century, combat deaths have accumulated at a much slower rate.

One need only compare the years of 1900 to 1925 with the years of 2000 to 2025 to quickly and clearly see the improvement.

It is true that this is a broken world, containing significant suffering.

But it is also true, in the words of Ian Drury and the Blockheads, that there are “reasons to be cheerful.”

Obama 2008, Obama 2012 — Same Candidate, Different Campaigns

In November 2008, Barack Obama won the election to become president. His campaign transmitted the idea that Obama was an outsider, not part of the national political establishment, and represented a new and fresh approach to governing. Obama presented himself as an “everyman,” with roots both in Hawaii and in Chicago, and so not representing a merely regional outlook.

Further, Obama’s heritage included, in his own words, his mother, whose skin was “as white as milk,” and his father, whose skin was “as black as pitch.” Obama hoped to be an embodiment of racial reconciliation and the harbinger of a “post-racial” society.

In the 2008 campaign, Obama used the traditional political phrases of “casting a wide net” and using a “big tent” approach. He was rewarded by obtaining votes from various demographic segments: voters in various income levels, various regions, various ethnic groups, and various racial groups elected him.

By contrast, the 2012 reelection campaign used a different approach.

Instead of a “wide” approach, the 2012 Obama campaign focused on obtaining not merely a majority, but a vast majority, from certain specific and narrowly-defined demographic segments. This approach highlights a peculiarity of electoral politics. A candidate can win by achieving a mere majority of all the voters, or by achieving a vast majority from a subset of the voters.

Both tactics lead to victory, but they do so with different societal dynamics.

A candidate can either find common interests and desires which appeal to all voters, or target specific policies which activate a strong reaction within a particular subset of voters. The latter strategy is sometimes called “identity politics” and dissects the electorate into groups by race, income level, religion, ethnicity, regionality, etc. An sad side effect of this strategy is that these groups will inevitably begin to see themselves in competition.

The campaign of 2008 and the campaign of 2012 were different from each other, projecting two different images of the candidate, and promulgating different political messages.

Some — perhaps many — candidates adjust their messages during campaigns to appeal to a maximum number of voters. Obama is no exception. Neither campaign fully reflected Obama’s beliefs or intentions.

In 1996, Obama stated clearly: “I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages.” During the 2008 campaign, Obama said, “I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman.” Finally, in 2012, he said, “I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.”

All three quotes are well documented.

It is certainly possible for a political leader to change his views on any given topic. It is, however, more reasonable to hypothesize that Obama merely disguised his views rather than changing them.

Reviewing the 2008 campaign, Sean Hannity wrote, “Democrats often managed to downplay the extent of their radicalism, pretending — at least when it suited their political purposes — to be a party of moderates,” and “Obama tried to conceal his radical ideology.”

Having stated opposition to same-sex marriage during the 2008 campaign, Obama appointed two justices to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2009 and 2010: Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. These two, in turn, became part of the Supreme Court majority which set a significant precedent with Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015 — a precedent which was the precise opposite of Obama’s 2008 statement during the campaign.

Voters who’d voted for Obama based on his words — his clear statement during the 2008 campaign — found that his actions were diametrically opposed to his announcement.

By contrast, Obama’s 2012 campaign featured what is called “identity politics.” Instead of leveraging a broad social and cultural consensus among diverse segments of the American electorate, Obama narrowly focused on specific segments, and spoke directly and only to them, delivering messages and promises designed exclusively for them.

Ben Shapiro notes the differences:

In 2012, President Barack Obama won reelection. He did so despite winning 3.5 million fewer votes than he did in 2008, and 33 fewer electoral votes; he did so despite winning the same percentage of the white vote losing Democrat John Kerry did in 2004; dropping support from 2008 among Americans across all age groups and education groups; and losing voters who made above $50,000 per year.

Obama won in 2008 and he won in 2012. But he won in two different ways. In 2008 he won a broad majority across various demographic segments. In 2012 he won a majority within select demographic segments, as Ben Shapiro writes:

The story of Obama’s 2012 victory is the story of the transformation of American politics. In 2008, Obama had been a different sort of candidate running a quite familiar campaign: a campaign of unification.

The 2008 campaign pointed to unity. Obama said that he would bring together various groups in American society:

Obama ran on the terms “hope” and “change,” pledging to move beyond America as a collection of “red states and blue states” and instead to unite Americans more broadly. In fact, Obama’s personal story was part and parcel of this appeal: he could justifiably claim to unite the most contentious strains of America in his own background, being the child of a white mother and a black father, raised in Hawaii but ensconced in the hard-knock world of Chicago, born to a single mother and raised by grandparents but educated at Columbia and Harvard Law School. Obama was, as he himself stated, a “blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”

By contrast, the 2012 campaign emphasized group identity over a common American identity:

In 2012 he charted a different course than in 2008. Instead of running a campaign directed at a broad base of support, Obama sliced and diced the electorate, focusing in on his new, intersectional coalition, a demographically growing agglomeration of supposedly victimized groups in American life.

The reframing of Obama’s campaign from 2008 to 2012 is more than the story of one candidate’s adjustments. It documents how one group of American candidates moved toward “identity politics” and began to treat demographic segments of the electorate in isolation from each other. This way of doing politics assumes or hopes that individuals view themselves primarily as members of a racial or ethnic group, and not as rational knowing agents.

For candidates who use the tactic of identity politics, the analytically thinking individual who examines questions of policy, diplomacy, and economics is anathema. Such candidates prefer voters who embrace a group identity, and prefer that identity to independent thinking.

The practice of identity politics seeks such voters, assuming and hoping they are plentiful. But it also nudges voters toward that viewpoint, and away from seeing themselves as deliberative rational intellects.

Lessons from the Pandemic: Architecture

During much of 2020 and early 2021, researchers devoted much attention to the transmission of the virus which had disrupted daily life around the world and caused people to quarantine. Investigators gathered and analyzed data in massive quantities and at record speeds.

Biologists, virologists, and epidemiologists produced so many reports in such a short time that it may take decades to thoroughly examine the discoveries and understand their true importance.

One area for exploration is the link between building structures and viral transmission.

Data consistently point to reduced infection rates among people who live in free-standing structures, i.e., in houses.

These are structures which are variously categorized: single family dwellings, detached condominiums, and other real estate classifications are used to label them.

Viral transmission is enhanced and amplified by structures like duplexes, triplexes, townhomes, row houses, and high rise buildings.

While it is intuitive that buildings with shared hallways — large condominiums and high rise apartment buildings — lead to more disease transmission, it is significant but less obvious that structures like duplexes do so as well.

While duplexes may feature separate entrances, and thus avoid the communal spaces like hallways, they often share attics, crawl spaces, and some HVAC amenities. Even something as small and simple as an electrical outlet on a shared wall can allow for some air exchange between two otherwise separate living spaces — and with this air exchange, infection.

The data of infection rates in medium and large cities confirm this hypothesis.

In a pandemic caused by an airborne contagion, a free-standing house is an important line of defense against infection.

City planners and urban planners would do well to bear this in mind.

Real Estate Red-Lining: Government Facilitates Racism

“Redlining” is the practice of limiting homeownership in a town or in a neighborhood on the basis of race, or what is perceived as race. It was a real estate practice, found in some locations in the United States in the twentieth century, but now almost extinct. Simply put, real estate agents and homeowners were told to sell houses only to people of certain genetic groups.

“Sundown towns” and “sundown neighborhoods” are a closely related concept. They were areas in which people considered to be “Black” were not to be after dark: i.e., those people weren’t to spend the night, and certainly not to own real estate in those areas. They might be tolerated if they were briefly there during daylight hours for business reasons.

Redlining, and the creation of sundown towns, came into being at the end of the Reconstruction Era in American History. Until the late 1870s, the Republican Party had legislated the presence of military and civilian officials in the former Confederate States in order to protect and preserve the civil rights of the former slaves. It worked: Black people voted in ever-increasing numbers, and African-Americans were elected to Congress and other high offices.

But at the end of the Reconstruction Era, this good trend ceased. The Democratic Party took over city, county, and state governments, and began enacting Jim Crow Laws, and enacting policies which were segregationist and racist.

The principle at work in these events is this: racism is a vile and evil sentiment; it remains merely a sentiment, and therefore toothless, until governments become sufficiently powerful to change sentiment into action.

An undergraduate researcher at the University of Michigan, Audrey Melillo, explains that in a typical “sundown town,” the leaders “encourage people to sign a pledge that they wouldn’t sell their home to anyone who wasn’t white.”

Such pledges were called ‘covenants’ in the real estate business. Such documents were immoral and wrong. But they were also meaningless, until the government agreed to enforce them.

A homeowner might sign such a pledge, but then later decide to sell the house to a Black family anyway. The pledge was simply a piece of paper, and the homeowner could ignore it — until the government stepped in. From local zoning boards to the United States Supreme Court, the government supported, or at least failed to overturn, verdicts based on such pledges.

Only because of a powerful government could racism move from being a nasty sentiment to a truly dangerous reality. What if the United States had more fully embraced the concept of a ‘weak’ or ‘limited’ government? What if the government refused, or lacked the ability, to facilitate racism?

Anna Megdell, also at the U of M, explains how took these pledges, which were initially powerless expressions of sentiment, and turned them into concrete and damaging realities: “Over the years, these policies were enforced formally through ordinances and legal covenants.”

Professor Stephen Berrey, likewise at the U of M, has researched sundown towns and the practice of redlining. He notes that “these rules were embedded in” local “zoning ordinances.”

The foul and indecent practices of redlining and sundown towns continued, in some parts of the country, into the mid-twentieth century; in some places, past mid-century.

The principle at work is this: Racism is a shameful and immoral idea. It remains merely an idea until the government obtains enough power to tempt the racist to leverage that power in favor of racism. Where governments are weak and limited, they cannot enforce concepts like segregation.

It may seem counterintuitive to plead for a “weak” government, but it is precisely a weak or “limited” government which prevents practices like redlining from taking effect. The term “limited” is more palatable, and therefore more common, in such discussions.

When a government is limited, it cannot intervene in free market decisions. The majority of homeowners and the majority of real estate agents — perhaps even all of them — are interested primarily in money. When they are selling houses, they want to sell to the highest bidder. Instantly, race is no longer a consideration.

Imagine a person who has a house to sell. Two offers are made to this owner. One offer is for $500,000 and the other offer is for $600,000. Which offer will the seller accept? The higher one, naturally. The seller will not stop to ask about the race (or gender, or religion, or ethnicity, etc.) of the potential buyer. In a “free market” economy, practices like redlining and sunset towns disappear quickly.

It is only when the government has enough power to force the seller to ignore the obvious economic reality that racist policies can take effect.

Economic transactions in an unregulated free market are the most effective instruments for anti-racism. Societies which allow people to freely buy and sell have no interest in a customer’s skin color; they are only interested in a customer’s money.

When local real estate markets are freed from government intervention — when governments no longer enforce rules and pledges about a customer’s race — then redlining and sunset towns quickly disappear.

Reasons to Be Cheerful — Part 5

Swedish researcher Hans Rosling made a career of pointing out that things in the world are often going better than people assume. His son and daughter-in-law carry on his work in the Gapminder Foundation, which seeks to dispel negative preconceptions about the state of the world.

The three of them co-authored a book titled Factfulness, which includes these observations:

• Safe drinking water is a key variable in public health. The “share of people with water from [a] protected source” around the world rose from 58% in 1980 to 88% in 2015.
• Educating girls as well as boys is a key factor in promoting prosperity as well as intellectual innovation. The “share of girls of primary school age enrolled” in school increased from 65% in 1970 to 90% in 2015.
• Immunization is a major variable in childhood wellbeing. The “share of 1-year-olds who got at least one vaccination” grew from 22% in 1980 to 88% in 2016.
• Adequate nutrition is foundational for other aspects of health. The “share of people undernourished” fell globally from 28% in 1970 to 11% in 2015.
• The environment affects all humans. In the 1970s scientists discovered that chlorofluorocarbons damage the atmosphere’s ozone layer. The ozone layer protects us from harmful UV light. In 1970, humans used 1,663,000 tons of “ozone-depleting substances.” In 2016, we used only 22,000 tons. The amount of ozone in the upper atmosphere is increasing.
• Warfare is obviously devastating to human life. In 1986, there were 64,000 nuclear warheads among the world’s military forces. The Soviet Union had the largest number of any nation. By 2017, there were only 15,000 warheads on the planet.
• In the twentieth century, approximately 200 million people were killed in combat, for an average of 2 million per year. In the year 1942 alone, an estimated 20,100,000 people died in war. So far, in the twenty-first century, the rate is much lower. A mere three million people are estimated to have died in combat in the first quarter of the twenty-first century. If this rate continues, the twenty-first century could be one of the safest and most peaceful centuries.
• Smallpox is a horrifying and often fatal disease. In the 1700s, smallpox killed 10% of the population in Sweden and France, and 14% of the population in Russia. In the 1700s and 1800s, it killed hundreds of millions of people. In 1850, 148 different countries reported cases of smallpox. In 1979, that number fell to zero as the disease was eradicated.
• Unique landscapes provide habitats for rare or endangered species. In 1900, only 0.03% of the land on the planet was part of preservation or conservation efforts. By 2016, 14.7% “of Earth’s land surface [was] protected as national parks and other reserves.”
• In 1869, the women in the State of Wyoming became among the very first women on the planet to enjoy the same legal voting rights as men. By 2017, women were voting in 193 countries.
• Although the decision to label a nation-state as democratic is somewhat ambiguous or subjective, in the year 1816, approximately 1% of the world’s population lived in a democracy. By 2015, it was 56%.

Rosling is making two points in his book: first, there is lots of good news to be received; second, that our communication tends to favor bad news. This happens both on a macro level, as the news media tends to publicize bad news ahead of good news, and on a micro level, as individual psychology tends to be more skeptical of good news than of bad.

It remains to be investigated whether this inclination to be distrustful of good news is innate or learned. In either case, it benefits the individual and society to be more deliberate in seeking, digesting, and relaying good news.

Kennedy and Laos: Evaluating JFK’s Foreign Policy

An aging Republican president finishes his second and final term in office, leaves the White House, and moves into his countryside home to enjoy his retirement years. A much younger Democratic president is inaugurated and begins his term in office, having campaigned as a fresh personality in the nation’s political landscape. He, his party, and the news media have stoked expectations for a new and youthful trend in policies.

With Eisenhower comfortably settled in Pennsylvania and Kennedy settling into the White House, however, the change from the one president to the next was not as significant as it was advertised to be, as historian John Stormer writes:

The party in power in Washington changed on January 20, 1961. The basic direction of American foreign policy remained the same.

To be sure, there were some substantial differences between the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations: Ike was hesitant to commit American troops into the Vietnam conflict, preferring to send observers, advisors, supplies, and cash. By contrast, Kennedy sent thousands of combat troops into Vietnam.

Both Eisenhower and Kennedy spoke sternly against the Soviet Socialists and the international communist conspiracy which the USSR operated. Kennedy’s efforts to implement his rhetoric were, especially early in his presidency, clumsy. John Stormer indicates how one might evaluate JFK’s foreign policy:

John F. Kennedy himself set the standard by which his administration must be judged. On November 8, 1961, he wrote the foreword for To Turn the Tide, a published collection of the speeches and statements he made in his first ten months as President.

Any presidency must be judged primarily on its actions, and only secondarily on its words. Too often the reverse is the case. Under close examination, there will always be some discrepancy between the words of a president and his concrete policies. No president is perfect. But the gap between word and deed should be kept to a minimum.

Kennedy himself expressed essentially this same principle:

Strong words alone, of course, do not make meaningful policy; they must, in foreign affairs, in particular, be backed by both a will and by weapons that are equally strong. Thus a collection of Presidential statements cannot convey their true perspective unless it is realized or recalled precisely what they signified in committing the power and majesty of the American people and government.

More than one president has made strong statements but failed to back them up with equally strong actions, or as John Stormer explains:

To evaluate President Kennedy’s Administration using the the standard he suggested requires a careful analysis of his words and actions in crisis after crisis.

The two-and-a-half years of the Kennedy presidency were indeed filled with multiple crises. Some of the crises would have happened anyway. Others may have been aimed at Kennedy by malevolent leaders like Khrushchev, Mao, and Castro. A few of the crises may have been created by Kennedy’s miscalculations.

The Soviet Socialists created a large number of foreign policy challenges between January 1960 and November 1963, from Cuba to China, from the USSR to southeast Asia, from Berlin to the Congo. How did Kennedy respond to these provocations? John Stormer explains:

In a widely publicized talk with Congressional leaders on March 26, 1961, President Kennedy promised that Laos, then under attack from Red China and North Viet Nam, would not be permitted to fall.

Yet by late 1962, Laos was solidly under the control of a communist dictatorship, and thousands of soldiers from North Vietnam and from communist China were encamped there. Beyond that, the Kennedy administration was sending foreign aid payments to Laos.

Although Sino-Soviet relationships were fraying in 1962, they had not yet ruptured. The Soviet Socialists and communist mainland China can be understood as acting in concert regarding the situation in Laos.

What happened to Laos between March 1961 and late 1962? Did Kennedy make a promise that he was unable to keep? If so, his promise was rashly made, or made without a thorough understanding of the situation. Presumably his promise was sincere. One hopes that he had a genuine desire to protect the lives and freedoms of the people of Laos.

Two interpretative options are open to the reader: either Kennedy didn’t fully know what he was doing, or he made a promise which he didn’t intend to keep. Neither option is appealing. Presidents should be slow to make such pledges.

American policy was in many ways the same during both the Eisenhower presidency and the Kennedy presidency. Kennedy, however, was weaker in the implementation of that policy.

What They Didn’t Discuss in the Presidential Campaign: The Global Situation in 1960

During the 1952 election season, the Cold War was front and center among the topics examined by the candidates, their parties, the news media, and the votes. Concepts like rollback, containment, and the Truman Doctrine held people’s attention, and the Korean War made these matters deadly.

Harry Truman, who was president in 1952, wasn’t running for reelection. The contest was between Eisenhower and Stevenson. General Dwight David Eisenhower, nicknamed “Ike,” had chosen Richard Nixon as his running mate. Adlai Stevenson chose John Sparkman as his candidate for vice president.

In terms of foreign policy, the voters wanted the Korean War to end quickly, but they also didn’t want defeat in that war. They also wanted a sense of strength in the NATO defensive coalition, and the ability to stop the inroads which Soviet Socialism was making in central and south America.

When it came to domestic policy, Sparkman was strongly pro-segregation, and Stevenson was indecisive, arguing that desegregation must be done slowly. Eisenhower and Nixon, on the other hand, were clearly in favor of desegregation and integration.

Eisenhower won handily, earning a large majority of votes cast by women, and enjoying popularity in all regions within the nation, including a large number of African-American voters, understood clearly that Ike was the one who would open the way to desegregation.

The 1956 election was largely a replay of 1952. Adlai Stevenson was again the Democratic Party’s candidate for president, but this time with a different running mate. In the meantime, Eisenhower had created peace in Korea and convinced the public that he was resisting Soviet aggression in Latin America.

By the time the 1960 presidential election rolled around, the political landscape was different. The two candidates, Nixon and Kennedy, were younger than the candidates in the previous two election cycles. The era of artificial orbital satellites had begun. The campaign had a different tone, as historian John Stormer notes:

Unlike the election campaign of 1952 when Communist infiltration of government and appeasement of world communism were key issues, these crucial topics were largely ignored in the 1960 presidential campaign.

At the end of the 1956 presidential campaign, only days before the vote, the Hungarian Revolution began and was quickly ended by brutal Soviet military force. The uprising’s timing was such that the American electorate didn’t have time to fully digest the details and implications of the event before voting. It could have been more thoughtfully examined in the course of the 1960 campaign, but it wasn’t.

Likewise, the 1960 election offered an occasion for a nuanced discussion of the Cuban situation. In 1958-1959, Fidel Castro had led the Communist Revolution to a victory, taken control of Cuba, become the dictator there, and began his reign which would eventually eventually be responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Cubans. Yet, in the campaigning, there was little or no serious analysis of Cuba, Castro, the revolution, or the fact that the U.S. State Department had, through malice or incompetence, enabled Castro’s dictatorship, as John Stormer reports:

Tragic handling of the Hungarian revolt was given passing mention by the Democrats, but only in areas with high concentrations of immigrants from Eastern Europe. Castro's rise to power was discussed in a partisan way. The sordid story of the State Department's direct responsibility for hiding the bearded dictator's communist affiliations, as disclosed by a Senate committee, was not mentioned.

A careful parsing of world events was absent because both political parties were intent on marketing their candidates rather than presenting a serious policy platform. The fact that the international communist conspiracy was threatening world peace, and threatening the freedoms of people in many nations, didn’t make for good advertising.

Nixon, as Ike’s VP, didn’t want to talk about any less-than-ideal outcomes which had emerged from the Eisenhower administration. Within the Republican Party, those intent on presenting a pleasant candidate urged those familiar with the global situation to be quiet, as John Stormer writes:

Richard Nixon was not likely to dredge up the record of failure and appeasement of the Administration of which he was part. Under pressures for "party unity" anticommunist Republicans remained silent.

In 1960, there was still a small embattled pro-freedom group within the Democratic Party. It echoed Truman’s sterner words — although Truman’s actions sometimes failed to live up to the sternness of his words — and hoped to speak for human rights and against communism. But the Democratic Party had lost its credibility to speak on the issue of world communism, because it had rallied around Alger Hiss, a known Soviet espionage agent who’d influenced policy decisions during the Roosevelt administration.

A party which supported Hiss, who’d let Stalin have his way at the Yalta Conference, couldn’t be taken seriously if it spoke out against the brutality of Soviet Socialist aggression. Neither party was willing to directly state the matter during the campaign, as John Stormer explains:

The few knowledgeable anti-communists in the Democratic Party were paralyzed by politics also. They knew that any loud voice raised against the dismal record of Modern Republicanism would have provoked only partisan replies, such as, “Well, we don’t have an Alger Hiss in our party.”

In a series of congressional hearings, William Wieland was exposed as having been instrumental in reducing American support for the people of Cuba and thereby helping Castro take power. William Wieland was a diplomat in the U.S. State Department. He, along with William Snow and Roy Rubottom, implemented a policy in which U.S. support for the Cuba people was reduced.

What did this have to do with the 1960 presidential campaign?

John Stormer refers to Wieland and his co-conspirators as “the William Wielands,” a somewhat awkward pluralizing of the name, but this blatant failure to oppose the international communist conspiracy should have been a topic in the 1960 campaign — yet it wasn’t:

Candidate John F. Kennedy didn't turn the spotlight on the tragic actions of the William Wielands in government. Instead, when Kennedy became President, William Wieland was promoted to the State Department committee charged with revising security procedures. As was noted in the opening chapter, President Kennedy denounced the woman reporter who described Wieland as a "security risk" during a televised press conference and questioned his appointment. Kennedy stated that Wieland's record, cleared by the State Department, qualified him for the highly sensitive post.

Historians have written in detail about the 1960 election: how it was a turning-point in the use of media in modern campaigning, how JFK’s youthful image shaped the public perception of the presidency, and how close the ballot counts were. But another aspect of the election was its failure to meaningfully acknowledge or address the threat which the Soviet Socialists and their global network posed.