Coronavirus and Inflation: 2020 - 2021

In a blog post appearing on this website on May 19, 2020, some statistics and predictions were presented for the coronavirus SARS CoV-2, which causes the Covid-19 disease.  This coronavirus can be aerosolized by normal breathing and spread to others, expressing itself in hyperactive immune response, pneumonia, stroke, excessive blood clotting, and the failure of lungs or other organs.

By way of contrast, the European plague (Black Death) of 1347 - 1351 C.E. was most likely an expression of bubonic plague, which is typically estimated to have killed between one-third and one-half of the European population during that interval.  Black Death is an infectious fever caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis and spread by fleas.  That long-ago European plague, as well as today’s global pandemic, caught their contemporary societies completely by surprise.

The origin of SARS CoV-2 is controversial: No pangolins, bats, or other non-human animals were ever found to have had the disease before its massive human outbreak centered on Wuhan, China in late 2019 or early 2020.  On June 24, 2021, Ewen Callaway published a news article (“Deleted coronavirus genome triggers scientific intrigue”) on nature.com.  There, Callaway stated that some SARS-CoV-2 genome sequencing of the early outbreak in Wuhan was removed in May 2020 from a U.S. government database by the scientists who had done the work.  The missing sequences, once recovered, were not dispositive of the origin of SARS-CoV-2.  Nevertheless, one wonders why those data files were temporarily withdrawn; why there was, apparently, U.S. government funding for coronavirus research at a Wuhan lab under Communist military auspices; whether that Wuhan research fell under the category of “gain of function” (the tweaking of the genetics of one virus in order to produce an even deadlier virus); and whether “gain of function” research is ever justified apart from the fact that “research makes money flow.”  These issues are not pursued here.

It should be noted that controversy also exists on the significance of asymptomatic cases (infected individuals without signs of disease) and on the distinction between “deaths due to Covid” and “deaths with Covid.”  How many co-morbidities are necessary before a death due to Covid-19 is relegated to a death with Covid-19?

It now seems appropriate to compare some of the early Covid-19 predictions from the May 19, 2020 blog post on this website with some of the actual results since then (as of the last half of January 2022).  (Here, all SARS-CoV-2 variants are considered together, including Delta and Omicron.)  As of May 1, 2020 the coronavirus pandemic had resulted in 3,334,416 reported cases and 237,943 officially attributable deaths world-wide; while the corresponding U.S. data were 1,098,565 cases and 64,577 deaths.  According to initial U.S. federal reports as of May 1, 2020 the estimated upper bound on the number of U.S. deaths in 2020 due to this outbreak of Covid-19 was 2.2 million.  Starting with these numbers and a total U.S. population of approximately 330,000,000, the implied upper bound on the U.S. Covid-19 mortality rate in 2020 was 0.67% (2.2 / 330).  

In contrast, the plague of 1347 to 1351 could be associated with four consecutive years with an annual mortality rate of 12%, which would account for the death of 40% of the population.  (Note that 1 - 0.88^4 = 0.4, which is in a mid-range between the historical estimates of 0.33 and 0.50.)  Thus, the implied upper bound on the U.S. mortality rate due to Covid-19 in 2020 was about 18 times smaller than the historically estimated annual European mortality rate due to bubonic plague during the mid-fourteenth century (0.67% ≈ 12% / 18).  On this metric, the bleakest U.S. outlook for 2020 would have had to be multiplied by a “horror-factor” of 18 in order to capture the reality of the earlier bubonic plague.  

Fortunately, the actual number of U.S. deaths attributed to Covid-19 as of January 21, 2022, as reported by the New York Times, is “only” about 860,000.  Of these, worldometer.info states that there were 370,781 such deaths in 2020 and 478,405 in 2021.  Using the number for 2021, the actual U.S. Covid-19 mortality rate in 2021 was 0.14% (0.478 / 330); and the corresponding “horror factor” was approximately 86 (0.14% ≈ 12% / 86).  On this metric, the actual U.S. Covid-19 mortality for 2021 would need to be multiplied by a “horror-factor” of 86 in order to capture the reality of the earlier bubonic plague.  

It was, and continues to be, a widespread presupposition that public health measures could have been (or still can be) instituted that will swiftly eliminate coronavirus deaths without regard to economic consequences.  This presupposition has proven to be false: So-called lockdowns of travel, trade, and commerce have led to world-wide economic recessions; portending ruinous taxation, hyper-inflation, and expropriation of rental properties; and auguring famine, civil chaos, and stark authoritarianism.  The U.S. Department of Labor’s March-to-April 2020 grocery inflation rate was 2.6%, the highest monthly increase since the mid-1970’s.  The year-over-year Consumer Price Index (CPI) for December 2021 (comparing December 2021 to December 2020) saw a 7.0% increase, which was the highest inflation rate since 1981.

One notes in passing that the CPI, a venerable economic index of long standing, was set up to ignore what its creators considered to be noisy data (food and fuel) and capital investment (housing).  Consequently, the CPI grossly underestimates the “real” inflation rate by ignoring some key inflation drivers.  Hence, it is fair to say both that inflation is at its worst since 1981 based on the CPI and its “market basket” of what people actually buy, apart from fuel, food, and housing; and that a more realistic inflation rate, as experienced by most individuals today, greatly exceeds 7%.

One also notes that the Roman Empire flourished economically from its inception in 27 B.C. until the reign of Marcus Aurelius (the Antonine dynast who reigned from 161 - 180 A.D.).  The earlier Roman Empire had relatively low taxes and a money supply that grew approximately in proportion to the size of the economy.  According to some historians, the so-called “Antonine plague” (smallpox or measles), imported into the Roman Empire by legionaries returning from battles in Mesopotamia, decimated society; drove up wages so as to create too many denarii chasing too few goods; made public administration and military preparedness impossible to finance; and caused inflation amounting to a factor of 100 or more from 200 A.D. to 300 A.D.  Diocletian and other exemplary military leaders extended the life of the Roman Empire, but inflation was ever present; and by 476 A.D. the last nominal Roman Emperor in the West was sent into exile by the barbarian Odoacer.

  The root cause of inflation in the late Roman Empire seems to have been the Antonine plague (imported by Roman legionaries), which in turn caused depopulation, economic disruption (high wages and low output), debasement of the currency via creative metallurgy, and ruinous levels of taxation imposed by desperate emperors simultaneously confronting foreign invasion.  (For example, in 251 A.D. a Goth army killed the Emperor Decius in battle in what is today northeastern Bulgaria.) 

  The root cause of post-2020 inflation in the United States is the coronavirus pandemic (imported by infected airline passengers), which in turn caused unacceptable mortality, economic disruption (trillions of dollars printed for welfare, lack of incentive to work, and supply-chain impediments), and debasement of the currency via printing press and spreadsheet.  Still looming are the ruinous levels of taxation to be imposed by a desperate governing class simultaneously confronting massive illegal immigration and declining real wages.

Comparing the root causes of inflation in each case, one might well expect increasing societal instability in the U.S. analogous to that in the late Roman Empire.

Exacerbating its modern-day economic crisis, the U.S. governing class has superimposed internecine sociological warfare based on a very recent neo-Marxist theory in which one fixed class of high-incarceration-rate individuals is oppressed by a second fixed class of low-incarceration-rate individuals.  Old Marxist theory never succeeded because inter-class mobility left no fixed class to vilify.  In contrast, the neo-Marxist theory holds that incarceration-rate status may be identified by racial group, which is a fixed characteristic.  Hence, there are well-defined, static groups of oppressors and victims awaiting Marxist redress of grievances and establishment of societal stability.  (How well are these oppressors defined?  What is the assigned racial group for high-incarceration-rate individuals guilty of loan fraud involving billion-dollar real estate?)  Dogmatically assuming the existence of fixed classes of oppressors and victims, the neo-Marxist theory holds that laws serve only the “privilege” of the oppressors until such time as a Marxist ruling class will re-issue superior laws.

Rescuing American History: Essay Reviews (3)

In this blog posting, we continue (from the September 6, 2021 and November 1, 2021 postings) a review of some essays on the topic of American-history education in the U.S.  These essays were recently published in the book “Red, White, and Black,” which includes critiques of the revisionist history published as the “1619 Project” by the New York Times.  The editor of “Red, White, and Black” is Robert L. Woodson, Sr.  Bibliographic data is included in Essay Reviews (1) appearing as the September 6, 2021 blog posting.  (There was a typographical error in that 9/6/21 posting: The correct name is Robert L. Woodson, Sr.)  Today’s blog posting will review another essay in “Red, White, and Black.”   

The essay appearing on pages 143 - 150 in Woodson’s book is titled “Critical Race Theory’s Destructive Impact on America.”  Its author, Carol M. Swain, currently a political commentator on nationally well-known news outlets, is a former university professor of political science and law at Princeton and Vanderbilt universities.  Swain finds that the 1619 Project is a revisionist history of race in America that invokes newfangled and morally repugnant claims in order to justify its thesis that racism is an American way of life that is irremediable - - unless the 1619 Project’s teaching materials are universally adopted.  The basis of this project is to assign 1619, the year that Africans first appeared in Virginia, as the founding year of the United States.  The 1619 Project holds that all of U.S. history revolves around the practice of slavery. (One notes in passing that 17th century Englishmen would have been astonished to learn that what they had considered as a North American seaboard ripe for colonization was instead a land destined to become a republic by virtue of what was, for them, an isolated sequence of transactions starting in 1619.)  

Swain mentions that this revisionist history has been put into the form of classroom materials for K-12 education without the normal, lengthy peer-review process.  As of February, 2020 these materials were in 3,500 classrooms.   However, a “small detail” seems to have been overlooked by the purveyors of the 1619 Project: Swain finds that during the forty-two years from 1619 to 1661, there was a mix of slavery and indentured servitude in North America.  The result was that some blacks became free.  Free blacks, American Indians, and whites all competed in buying slaves, which were legally imported after 1661.  “Early Negroes imported into Virginia held the status of indentured servants … [and received] ‘freedom dues’ in the form of land at the end of their term of service.”  There are documented cases of free black individuals who were able to pay for the import of additional indentured servants and to receive 50 acres of land for each indentured servant imported.

The picture of colonial individuals who maintained some measure of mobility among slave, indentured, and free classes “differs substantially from the narrative advanced by the 1619 Project contributors.”  There is the appearance, Swain thinks, that the 1619 Project is a stalking horse for the larger project of extracting and administering reparations for slavery.  Reparations would flow from sufficiently non-black individuals to sufficiently black individuals.  Reparations would be theoretically justified by the assumed existence of torts and malfeasance by some remote ancestors against other remote ancestors.  

Swain maintains that reparations are wrong, first, on utilitarian grounds: The real problems of some black citizens would not be addressed by reparations, and the real progress shown by other black citizens would not be recognized.  Second, reparations are wrong on moral grounds: Today’s white Americans are not responsible for great-great-great grandparents who might have been insufficiently zealous in abolishing slavery (or who might have been residing in Slovakia or Lithuania).  Moreover, free blacks, American Indians, and whites all bought slaves.  Finally, one notes in passing the problem that, for the purposes of reparations, it would be impossible for any individual, of any race, to prove that some remote ancestor had not held slaves at some time in the remote past.  What should one say about African Americans whose near ancestors were slaves in North America, but whose remote ancestors held slaves in Africa?  Proving a negative is no more likely of success in reparations theory than in any other endeavor.

Swain goes on to define “critical race theory” (CRT) as an analytic framework to analyze institutions and culture, dividing the world into white oppressors and non-white victims.  CRT uses anecdotes and “personal narratives” in place of traditional historical data.  The goal is to create a new ruling class.  Such a class would be available for administrating reparations.  Although left unsaid by Swain in her essay, one notes in passing that any new ruling class will owe homage and fealty to the theorists of the 1619 Project and to sufficiently “woke” individuals of any race - - or so those theorists and “woke” individuals hope.  (An individual is said to be “woke” if he or she is a connoisseur of life’s inequities, being adept in their detection and elimination.)

In the world of the 1619 Project, Swain states, “education is now about white privilege indoctrination.”  Even poor Appalachians (and one thinks also of the descendants of the Okies who fled the dust bowl) are guilty of incorrect skin color.  Swain maintains that “The 1619 Project is a misguided effort to keep open historical wounds while telling only half the story … Blaming today’s families for the mistakes of our ancestors is not a prescription for unifying the country or empowering racial and ethnic minorities.”  Swain is able to perceive this misguided effort, because “I [Swain] reached my formative years before critical race theory and cultural Marxism gained a dominant foothold.”

Rescuing American History: Essay Reviews (2)

In this blog posting, we continue (from the September 6, 2021 posting) a review of some essays on the topic of American-history education in the U.S.  These essays were recently published in the book “Red, White, and Black,” which includes critiques of the revisionist history published as the “1619 Project” by the New York Times.  The editor of “Red, White, and Black” is Robert L. Woodson, Sr.  Bibliographic data is included in Essay Reviews (1) appearing as the September 6, 2021 blog posting.  (There was a typographical error in that 9/6/21 posting: The correct name is Robert L. Woodson, Sr.)  Today’s blog posting will review two of the essays in “Red, White, and Black.”   

The essay appearing on pages 37 – 42 in Woodson’s book is titled “Slavery Does Not Define the Black American Experience.”  Its author, Wilfred Reilly, is an associate professor of political science at Kentucky State University.  (A different essay by Reilly was reviewed in the 9/6/21 blog post.)  No one denies, writes Reilly, “that the ‘land of the free’ once used captives from other societies almost as cattle,” in a slaving system that ranged from Latin America to the Muslim states of the Middle East.  A balanced view of history, in Reilly’s opinion, requires the recognition that the primary factor in the building of the U.S. economy was not slavery; indeed, the South was considered to be a feudal backwater conquered by the Union army.  In 1860, the South had 25% of the U.S. population but only 10% of its capital and 10% of its skilled-trades workers.  Moreover, Reilly quotes the economist Thomas Sowell as saying that “the prevalence of slavery in the antebellum South resulted in a mocking and disparaging attitude towards hard work that continues to plague both ‘white trash’ and inner-city black communities today.”

In 1619, Reilly estimates that there were 210 English-speaking settlers on the North American continent.  It is not clear whether the 20 Africans held by the English-speaking settlers were slaves or indentured servants; or whether the 20 Africans (upon learning English) were in addition to, or a subset of, the population of 210.  Riley cites the following statistics: By the time of the first U.S. Census in 1790, there were, in round numbers, about 4 million Americans including 0.8 million people of African descent.  By the 1790’s, 10 states and territories were slave-free.  Civil War deaths numbered about 360,000 for the Union Army and 258,000 for the Confederate Army.  There were about 9 or 10 slaves freed for each Union Army death.  In 1865, slavery was abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.  

A critically important consideration for Reilly is that some contemporary problems that are commonly attributed to “the legacy of slavery” have only appeared in the last few decades, long after the conclusion of the Civil War.  Chief among those problems is that the black illegitimacy rate is about 75% today; whereas some data from 1925 New York City shows that all but 15% of black households were then headed by two parents.  Empirically, Reilly finds that contemporary factors such as pay-per-child welfare and under-policing of black neighborhoods seem to be responsible for contemporary problems in black communities.  Reilly agrees with the 1619 Project contributors that slavery was horrible.  However, slavery was the world-wide norm until Western societies began to fight it.  Slavery prospered only in the poorest region of the U.S., and more than 600,000 lives were lost during liberation.  While there are contemporary problems in American minority communities, Reilly observes that “ironically, more than a few of them seem to be the result of ‘compassionate’ liberal social welfare policies implemented during just the past few decades.”

The essay appearing on pages 23 – 36 in “Red, White, and Black” is titled “We Cannot Allow ‘1619’ to Dumb Down America in the Name of a Crusade.”  Its author, John McWhorter, is an associate professor of English at Columbia University.  McWhorter finds the 1619 Project to be an exercise in historical misinterpretation.  Being honest about the performance of American Presidents should also include the “Hester Prynne factor”: No matter what the background of a person is - - as revealed by a scarlet letter or by some latter-day equivalent - - that person can be kind and virtuous at the present moment.  It is inappropriate to think of slavery as overwhelming all other factors in a complex world.  Overemphasizing scarlet letters of whatever type calls for the dumbing down of history in the name of a moral crusade.  The gradual abolition of slavery was itself a miracle, facilitated by Jefferson’s signature on some legislation of 1808 banning the foreign slave trade in the United States.  The year 1808 was the earliest date permitted by the Constitution for such legislation.

McWhorter notes that it makes no more sense to think of American history as being comprehensively captured in an orbit about slavery than it would be to think of that history as being exclusively explained by a feminist critique of the fate of colonial white women.  One notes in passing that a historical analysis based on colonial white women would presumably require a “1587 Project” commemorating Virginia Dare, the first white indigenous female in the Roanoke Colony.

The purveyors of the 1619 Project ask us to believe that the existence and ill-treatment of slaves negates all the other characteristics of the colonial and revolutionary-war ruling class.  But McWhorter says that “a smart ten-year-old could see through the willful cluelessness on which this supposedly enlightened conception of social history is based.  Who seriously condemns persons of the past for being unable to see beyond the confines of their own time?”  The 1619 Project’s view of history is familiar from Marxist ideology; and although it makes for bad history, it may be serviceable for use in extracting reparations for favored groups at some time in the future.

McWhorter finds that the 1619 Project also serves as an explanation for disparities between black and white achievement.  In his view, such an explanation is problematic: For example, there were plenty of black students with sky-high IQs in the Chicago of the 1930’s; but by 2020 “we would not find that kind of IQ performance among those very students’ great grandchildren.”  The reader is left to infer the passage from 1930 to 2020 was adversely affected by the 1960’s and its Great Society.  

Regarding the 1619 Project, McWhorter notes two peculiarities that detract from the idea of its being a reliable historical guide: First, “countless human groups have succeeded amidst dismissive attitudes … [but] for some reason, in the late 20th century in the United States … one particular oppressed class, the descendants of African slaves, could only fitfully succeed once the ruling class underwent a profound transformation … down all the way to its basal, pre-cortical impulses.”  Second, for many people, “questioning the 1619 Project elicits irritation, of a kind that suggests personal insult rather than difference of opinion.  This is because the 1619 Project is indeed all about personality, a certain persona that smart black people are encouraged to adopt as a modern version of being a civil rights warrior.”

Social Justice and the Notion of “Race off the Table”

Plato thought that justice in a society implies a harmonious functioning of all the members of that society under a philosopher-king, whereas justice in an individual implies a harmonious functioning of all aspects of the individual’s personality under reason.  Justice implies receiving one’s due, which can refer to distributive sharing of economic rewards, or retributive assignment of punishments.  A zeroth-order definition of social justice is the equality of opportunity for individuals who are working in order to obtain economic benefits and prestige in a meritocratic system.  In stark opposition to that definition is the Marxist credo, “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”  In this essay, we will assume the equality-of-opportunity approach to social justice.  Whenever race is held to be irrelevant, as a matter of public policy, to the process of obtaining economic or societal benefits, then we say that “race is off the table” (not a factor that is or should be taken into consideration).  “Race being off the table” is consistent with Martin Luther King’s principle of judging individuals by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.

The main problem in social-justice theory considered as equality of opportunity is the accounting for the effects of an individual’s previous family history on his or her opportunity to achieve adequate economic and societal outcomes.  

The philosopher John Rawls sought a way to institute “Justice is Fairness,” which is the title of the first chapter in his book, “A Theory of Justice.”  Rawls wanted social contract theory on a higher level of abstraction that would connect to a theory of rational choice.  One of his basic principles was that inequalities of wealth and authority are just only if they result in compensating benefits for everyone.  A Rawlsian government is capable of trading off subsidies to the least advantaged and confiscation of wealth from the most advantaged in order to leave society as a whole better off.  Outright confiscation of all property would presumably be harmful to future economic survival, but who knows where a particular legislative body at a particular time will set the ever-changing limit on confiscation of wealth.  Indeed, if it is true - - as a celebrated politician once said while critiquing the entrepreneurial class - - that “You [the entrepreneur] didn’t build that!”; then the way seems to be open for a practically unlimited confiscation of individuals’ wealth, whether annually or at death.  On the other hand, although there may be a role for some level of government transfer payments, there is an alternative to an exclusive emphasis on “subsidies to the least advantaged,” as seen in the life and work of Robert L. Woodson, Sr.

On page A13 of the print edition of the Wall Street Journal (Oct. 16-17, 2021) there is an interview of Robert L. Woodson, Sr. by Jason Willick.  (There was a typographical error in the blog of September 6, 2021: The correct name is Robert L. Woodson, Sr.  The name was cited correctly in the blog of October 1, 2020.)

At 84, Robert L. Woodson, Sr. is preparing to retire from a career of promoting social justice.  After years of social work that included the foundation of the Woodson Center and a participation in the reform of Washington’s Kenilworth-Parkside public housing project, Woodson helped to influence President Reagan to sign a 1988 reform of federal public-housing laws that emphasized tenant management.  At Kenilworth-Parkside, tenant management was successful in ousting oppressive drug dealers and in sending 600 kids to college over the course of 12 to 15 years. 

Woodson grew up in Philadelphia and was distressed by the segregation that he saw when a military assignment sent him to the Deep South.  He earned math and social work degrees before leading protests against segregation in West Chester, Pennsylvania in the 1960’s and founding the Woodson Center in 1981.  The Woodson Center’s objective has been to reinvigorate indigenous civil society in impoverished neighborhoods and to respond to problems of crime, addiction, and family breakdown.  Ultimately, Mr. Woodson wants to “deracialize race” by making it an incidental category in social-improvement projects.

The Woodson Center’s most recent project has been “1776 Unites,” which opposes leftist educational programs and offers an educational curriculum that has been downloaded 21,000 times.  The leading theme of “1776 Unites” is that the nation’s history of racial oppression should be not merely a source of moral accusation, but a celebration of black Americans’ resilience in the face of oppression.  The curriculum stands in “unqualified opposition to any curricula that depict America as irredeemably racist … or fail to provide examples from history of black achievement against the odds.”  Clearly, Woodson’s vision of social justice is one of equality of opportunity for individuals who are encouraged by mentors to overcome problems in family history.  Mentored individuals work to achieve economic benefits and social prestige in a meritocratic system.  Individual achievement occurs without government intervention to create equality of outcome.

Mr. Woodson believes that some progressives’ campaigns to achieve diversity at elite schools via the elimination of standardized tests is a modern-day form of lethal bigotry.  Woodson’s hope is that America can get “race off the table, so we can deal with the moral and spiritual free fall that is consuming all races of people.” 

Structural Racism, Identity Politics, and Re-tribalization

For those interested in the flourishing of the United States in a historically recognizable form, despite adverse criticisms under the headings of “structural racism” and “identity politics”; and despite an implied imperative for a “re-tribalization of society”; a single page from the Opinions section of a recent day’s print edition of the Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, September 7, 2021) is of considerable interest. 

William McGurn remarks in his article, The Real Structural Racism, that if ever there were a structure impairing the success of African-American students, then it would be the public schools in major cities of the U.S.  In the most recent results (2019) of the National Assessment of Educational Progress for 27 U.S. urban school districts - - from Boston to Los Angeles - - none of these school districts can say that a majority of its black eighth graders are proficient in either math or reading.  Detroit’s results are worst of all, showing a 4% proficiency in math and a 5% proficiency in reading.  The highest proficiency in math (24%) was achieved in Charlotte, while the highest proficiency in reading (20%) was achieved in Boston.  Meanwhile, the most richly supported public schools spent from $16,543 per student (Seattle) to $28,004 per student (New York City).

There is no mention of cinematography in McGurn’s article, but we note in passing that a recent popular film, Hidden Figures, chronicled a very talented trio of high-achieving black female workers in the highly technical NASA programs (“Space Race”) of the 1960’s.  (The filmmaker took some liberties with historical facts, but those liberties seem not to invalidate the focus of the film.)  This trio of technical workers was doubly blessed, being not only talented but also coming from solid family backgrounds.  Seeing the universal in the particular, as we are wont to do whenever appropriate, there is no good reason not to expect high scores in math and reading among contemporary black eighth graders who live in solid family backgrounds conducive to the completion of homework.

McGurn notes that some progressives, embarrassed by the meager educational results for black eighth graders, have shifted their focus to getting rid of the achievement tests that expose this failure.  Once free of irksome tests for eighth and twelfth graders, it is proposed that future reliance on race-based college admissions can disguise academic deficiencies.  As various courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, consider suits stemming from race-based college admissions, McGurn suggests that the key question to consider is: Do school failures at the eighth (and subsequent) grade levels justify rigging college admissions to exclude some high-achieving students in favor of other applicants whose acceptance, due to “social-promotion,” will devalue college degrees?

By “identity politics,” the current reviewer understands any process that privileges or penalizes certain individuals in society on some basis other than objective merit, including the property rights that express the wills of meritorious individuals.  Non-meritocratic factors include ethnicity, race, culture, religion, and language.  Any full-scale program of identity politics includes the destruction of the notion of objective merit, leaving one to wonder whether an identity-politics enthusiast would really prefer that the pilot of his next flight be chosen from an ethnic lottery rather than from a pool of competent and tested individuals.

Discussions of identity politics often employ, confusingly, the problematic terms “tribe” and “tribalism.”  A tribe in the ancient Roman Republic (509 to 27 B.C.) was one of the 35 geographically-determined voting blocs of the Roman plebeians in their Council of the Plebs.  However, the plebs defined themselves in opposition to the patricians.  If “identity politics” is to be read into the ancient Roman world, then this reading would seem to be based upon the struggle between plebs and patricians; and not upon any difficulties between tribes, all of whom were plebeian.  Nevertheless, we will take “tribe” to refer to be any grouping of people according to ethnicity, race, culture, language, or religion.

The entire project of reading “identity politics” back into ancient Roman history is problematic: When the armies of Rome first confronted Germanic tribes in the Cimbrian War (113-101 B.C.), the Romans certainly disdained what they saw as the Germans’ inferior culture, religion, and language.  But the (relatively brown) Romans did not disdain the (relatively white) Germans based on skin color; because, as the classical philologist V. D. Hanson has written in his article, Classical patricide, “Whiteness itself was a concept completely unknown to the Greeks and Romans. No such word exists in the classical vocabularies of the ancient world, the supposed font of endemic Western racism.”

In his article, Identity Politics Goes Global, Walter Russell Mead surveys some political trends of the past century or so that reveal identity politics to be destructive in the sense of reducing a nation’s domestic prosperity and stability, as well as its international influence and security.  

Mead notes that many modern African nations inherited geographical boundaries from colonial times, irrespective of historical tribal boundaries.  The post-World War II presupposition among professional diplomats was that tribalism was primitive, atavistic, and ethically tacky.  Modern diplomacy then assumed that any tribe member assigned to a certain, modern-day nation would automatically be pleased to vote alongside the members of all other tribes within that nation.  Hence, there was a wide-spread expectation that tribalism would wane even while allegiance to the rulers within newly defined national boundaries would flourish.  

In defiance of the expectation for the straightforward development of African nations, some of those new nations broke up due to cultural, religious, and language factors.  The citizens of some failed states saw no good reason to be co-governed by members of cultural, religious, and language groupings other than their own.  In Nigeria, the central government has not been able to suppress Christian-Muslim conflict that has led to tens of thousands of deaths.  In South Africa, Zulus have staged a recent insurrection (or at least a quasi-insurrection) in support of a former national leader.  Similar conflicts have arisen in the regions near Ethiopia and Sudan.  Sudan spun off South Sudan in 2011; South Sudan may further split.  English-speakers and French-speakers are battling each other in Cameroon.  Economic development has not overcome tribal differences in these cases.

Mead sees other historical examples of identity politics as well: In Eastern and Central Europe before World War I, increasing education and self-awareness led to nationalistic aspirations among groups within the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Russian Empires. The assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serbian nationalist precipitated World War I.  Today, fierce fighting exists within such countries as Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and Lebanon; and this fighting can be viewed as the result of identity politics.

Mead likewise observes that “many Americans wonder whether a common U.S. identity is strong enough to contain the forces that threaten to splinter the country permanently into hostile racial, religious, and ideological camps.”

The current reviewer observes that “civic religion” and economic development in the U.S. helped to create a melting pot of people who agreed to pursue economic interests; to promote abstract notions of international justice; and to ignore traditionally contentious issues in the realms of culture, religion, and language.  Thus, the U.S. is the unique, centuries-long experiment of creating and maintaining a non-tribal society based on merit.  The current effect of identity politics is to reverse the melting-pot process, to drive wedges between ethnic groups, to override evaluations based on merit, to instill doubt about the results of one’s next airplane trip or surgical procedure, and to re-tribalize society under new bureaucratic leadership.