Since we were “suspended for 60 days” by Facebook – ostensibly  for reproducing a photograph with a mildly funny but harmless caption – we have had a most welcome increase of visitors to this site.

We assume that at least some of the newcomers have migrated from our Facebook territory. But we  cannot be sure, because we have had no new commenters here. Daily we look for familiar names and pseudonyms but so far have not found them.

So if you are a new reader, whether formerly of our Facebook page or not, please:-

Click on the title of a post, or on the word “comments” underneath it, to get to the comment page.

Sign up for Disqus if asked to.

Comment freely. Difference of opinion is welcome (but not obscenities, ad hominem insults to us, advertisements, or sheer lunatic ravings).

16 months into the Covid-19 pandemic, about 3 million people across the world are said to have died of it. (Data from Johns Hopkins University.)

Approximate population of the world: 7.9 billion

More world wide statistics:

Approximate annual deaths from car accidents: 1.3 million

Approximate annual deaths from malaria: 1-3 million

Approximate annual deaths from heart disease: 8.8 million

Approximate annual deaths from starvation: 9 million

Approximate annual deaths from cancer: 10 million

Estimated deaths from Spanish flu post-WWI: 20-50 million

Approximate annual deaths of unborn babies by abortion: 56 million

Approximate deaths caused variously by World War Two: 75 million

Estimated deaths inflicted by Communist regimes: 60-150 million*

Approximate deaths in the name of Religion (all but one in the last millennium, and with underestimates and many omissions in the list): 195 million

For a list of deaths by religion that is interesting to read though inaccurate – as all such lists must be since the count of deaths and the certainty of their cause can never be verified – go here.

Note: Wars have been waged by regimes which were officially atheist – such as those waged by and in Soviet Russia – but no war has ever been fought (or massacre carried out) in the name of atheism, or in order to advance or impose atheism.

*From Wikipedia:

In 1985, John Lenczowski, director of European and Soviet Affairs at the United States National Security Council, wrote an article in The Christian Science Monitor in which he stated that the “number of people murdered by communist regimes is estimated at between 60 million and 150 million, with the higher figure probably more accurate in light of recent scholarship”.

We mourn the loss of Professor Walter Williams (1936-2020), a great man, a great thinker.

We looked forward to reading what another great man and great thinker, Thomas Sowell, would say about his friend Walter Williams.

Today (December 3, 2020) Thomas Sowell writes at Townhall:

Walter Williams loved teaching. Unlike too many other teachers today, he made it a point never to impose his opinions on his students. Those who read his syndicated newspaper columns know that he expressed his opinions boldly and unequivocally there. But not in the classroom.

Walter once said he hoped that, on the day he died, he would have taught a class that day. And that is just the way it was, when he died on Wednesday, December 2, 2020.

He was my best friend for half a century. There was no one I trusted more or whose integrity I respected more. Since he was younger than me, I chose him to be my literary executor, to take control of my books after I was gone.

But his death is a reminder that no one really has anything to say about such things.

As an economist, Walter Williams never got the credit he deserved. His book Race and Economics is a must-read introduction to the subject. Amazon has it ranked 5th in sales among civil rights books, 9 years after it was published.

Another book of his, on the effects of economics under the white supremacist apartheid regime in South Africa, was titled South Africa’s War Against Capitalism. He went to South Africa to study the situation directly. Many of the things he brought out have implications for racial discrimination in other places around the world.

I have had many occasions to cite Walter Williams’ research in my own books. Most of what others say about higher prices in low income neighborhoods today has not yet caught up to what Walter said in his doctoral dissertation decades ago.

Despite his opposition to the welfare state, as something doing more harm than good, Walter was privately very generous with both his money and his time in helping others.

He figured he had a right to do whatever he wanted to with his own money, but that politicians had no right to take his money to give away, in order to get votes.

In a letter dated March 3, 1975, Walter said: “Sometimes it is a very lonely struggle trying to help our people, particularly the ones who do not realize that help is needed.”

In the same letter, he mentioned a certain hospital which “has an all but written policy of prohibiting the flunking of black medical students”.

Not long after this, a professor at a prestigious medical school revealed that black students there were given passing grades without having met the standards applied to other students. He warned that trusting patients would pay — some with their lives — for such irresponsible double standards. That has in fact happened.

As a person, Walter Williams was unique. I have heard of no one else being described as being “like Walter Williams”.

Holding a black belt in karate, Walter was a tough customer. One night three men jumped him — and two of those men ended up in a hospital.

The other side of Walter came out in relation to his wife, Connie. She helped put him through graduate school — and after he received his Ph.D., she never had to work again, not even to fix his breakfast.

Walter liked to go to his job at 4:30 AM. He was the only person who had no problem finding a parking space on the street in downtown Washington. Around 9 o’clock or so, Connie — now awake — would phone Walter and they would greet each other tenderly for the day.

We may not see his like again. And that is our loss.

Home alone?

We wish all our readers, visitors, commenters, critics, good feasting on this first Thanksgiving of the new era of American tyranny.

Selected from our Facebook comments on this photo, one by Jeanne Shockley:

Is there a young woman out there who would seriously consider marrying this or having its baby?

Our reply:

No. And that’s the whole idea. The fashion for transgendering (rendering people sterile), the low fertility rates of Western countries, encouragement of abortion, the anti-family agenda, the “MeToo” nonsense, feminism, all point to the same thing – the dwindling away of the free enlightened peoples of the earth. It is the top policy of the Left.

Even more than the ugly and ridiculous clothes, the sickly epicene model with his apathetic droop tells the story of our time: the decline of the West.

To start a lively discussion, we posted these statements on our Facebook page today.

The lively discussion followed. Maybe it will follow here too.

Gods did not create Man; Man created gods.

Religion not only teaches untruth, it excludes the search for truth.

There is no Mind presiding over this universe.

(The last two are among our Articles of Reason listed under Pages in our margin.)

We have been told authoritatively that our article, A Fauci farce to force a recession?, was “put in the hands of the President” yesterday morning (Tuesday, March 24, 2020).

It is suspected by some of our readers who helped get it there, that the absence of Dr. Fauci from the President’s daily briefing was directly due to its persuasive message (no doubt along with many other items selected by his advisers).

We trust our informants.

We are happy to have made a contribution to getting America back to work in April and so saving the economy – and maybe frustrating an evil plot of the Left.

President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump at the Taj Mahal

WE WISH OUR READERS AND COMMENTERS

 ENCOURAGERS AND CORRECTORS

CONTRIBUTORS AND OBJECTORS

(but not our enemies, be damned to them!)

HAPPINESS AND SUCCESS IN THE NEW YEAR

2020

AND ALL THEIR YEARS TO COME