The gradocracy

Sam Smith - About sixty years ago, America was just a decade past the last war it would ever win. The length of the average work week was down significantly from the 1930s but real income had been soaring and would continue do so through the 1970s. We had a positive trade balance and the …

The media: from watch dog to lap dog

Sam Smith - In the late 1930s a survey asked Washington journalists for their reaction to the following statement: It is almost impossible to be objective. You read your paper, notice its editorials, get praised for some stories and criticized for others. You 'sense policy' and are psychologically driven to slant the stories accordingly. Sixty …

Blowin’ in the winds of change

This is the fifth in a series of essays on the end of the First American Republic, this one mostly written in 2005. Sam Smith - Thomas Jefferson saw it coming. He warned, "From the conclusion of this war we shall be going down hill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment …

Top rot

Sam Smith - One good way to judge the state of a culture is to check out its leadership. Absent a strong, continuing rebellion from the bottom or a conscious devolution of power, this leadership leaves its mark on every aspect of society. For us, this is not a new problem. Shortly before 9/11 I …

Elite emmigration

 Sam Smith - There is major concern over the effects of immigration on our economy. It is also badly misplaced. The foreign born population in the US - as a percentage of the total - is about what it was from 1860 to 1910: 13%. It has ranged from a low of 5% in 1970 …

Dismantling the Democrats

Sam Smith - The last clearly identifiable period during which the Democratic Party was a positive influence on the country was during the Johnson administration. Since then the number of Democratic Party led improvements have been minor. If this seems excessively critical consider the following list of things achieved before 1970 and compare that to …