Why Sequoyah’s Cherokee Syllabary Looked like the Circassian Alphabet

  

As locally understood cryptic script, it was the obvious choice for a local script.  That changed quickly and soon enough english script dominated.

Yet we learn a lot of the various strains of peoples learning to live in what was a vast rich country,

None of it is truly important except as part of a historical narrative. .

Why Sequoyah’s Cherokee Syllabary Looked like the Circassian Alphabet

Posted by Richard Thornton | Dec 18, 2016 
 
| https://peopleofonefire.com/why-sequoyahs-cherokee-syllabary-looked-like-the-circassian-alphabet.html

The famous Cherokee scholar, Sequoyah, probably never even saw the “Cherokee Syllabary” used today.  The current Cherokee Syllabary was created in 1827 by Elias Boudinot, editor of the Cherokee Phoenix Newspaper and the Rev. Samuel Worcester, missionary to the Cherokees at New Echota.  Sequoyah had been living on the frontier, west of the Mississippi for six years at that time.

Sequoyah was not even his original name.  That was his mother’s last name. He is called George Gist on a medal awarded to him in 1825 by the Cherokee National Council. Since he was not able to travel east to receive the honor, it was later taken to him. These are just two of many “dirty little secrets” that surround the life of George Gist.  In fact, most historians agree that there is very little about George Gist’s life that today can be collaborated by hard evidence.  There are so many contradictions within the individual versions of Sequoyah’s life, it is almost impossible to determine what is 100% factual.

Perhaps what is equally surprising is that the mother of Sequoyah, Wutah, had name that was either African or Gullah.  It has no meaning in Cherokee or Creek.  The word means, “witch.”   Later in life, Sequoyah would be charged with witchcraft.

However, if one digs deeper into the linguistic and historic evidence, the situation gets far more complex than even the historians acknowledge.  Most academicians are not even aware that the Cherokee syllabary is not the same thing as the Sequoyah Syllabary.  You certainly won’t be told that tourist literature or official Cherokee histories, offered to the public.

Oh . . . did we mention that the Circassians call themselves the Cherikess?
 

The old and new Cherokee syllabaries

George Gist had created a quite different syllabary, which primarily consisted of complex curves. Many of the letters are identical to those of Circassian Medieval Script and slightly less similar to Armenian and Georgian Medieval Scripts.  All three peoples lived east of the Black Sea in the southern Caucasus Mountains. Standard histories of Sequoyah say that he had seen writing systems, but could not read English.  How in the world would he have been exposed to obscure writing systems from the Caucasus Mountains? 

George Gist’s letters were difficult to mold into the metal types, used for printing newspapers.  Furthermore, many whites considered them to be the work of the devil, because they were so different than the Roman alphabet.  Boudinot and Worcestor therefore created a new syllabary that more closely resembled the Cyrillic alphabet, used in Russia.

So the Cherokees, who learned Sequoyah’s original syllabary, had to learn a new one, when the Cherokee Phoenix began publication.  In truth, the Cherokee syllabary portion of the newspaper was never more than two columns, and by the end of the newspaper’s life in 1832, had dwindled down to a token presence. Sequoyah’s syllabary played a major role in the unification of the Cherokee People in the 1820s.   From then on, the syllabary became more of a statement of ethnic identity than a useful tool for trade and government. The Cherokees learned that it was of little value in a world controlled by white men, when they had to deal with white men.

The Circassians

The Circassians were originally a cluster of tribes, speaking similar languages, within the first Christian nation, the Kingdom of Georgia.  King Mirian declared Christianity to be the official state religion of the nation in 337 AD.  However, Zoroastrianism effectively functioned as a second state religion, well into the Middle Ages.  Zoroastrianism is quite similar to the traditional religion of the Cherokees, which involves the conjuring of demons in fires and springs in order to guide decisions.

Many of the Circassian tribes were forcibly converted to Islam during the Middle Ages, but the Circassians refused to switch to speaking Arabic or use the Arabic writing system.  Until the majority were forced to change their religion, there was little culturally, which distinguished the Circassians from their neighbors, the Georgians and Armenians. Some Circassian tribes to this day remain Christian and continue to resist pressure to convert.

 

Because of their refusal to accept Arabic cultural traditions, the Circassians were treated by their Persian and Turkish Muslim overlords in the same manner as Christians and Jews. During the Middle Ages most Muslims were exempt from forced military service.  However, Christian, Jew and Circassian males were drafted. The rugged mountain shepherds and farmers of the Circassians became known as excellent soldiers.  Hence they received the name that they call themselves today Çherikess.  The word means “Warrior People.” 

Between 1514 and 1823, the Ottoman and Persian Empires fought 11 wars.  All of these wars included military campaigns in Armenia, Georgia and Circassian.  All three were vassals of Muslim nations, but the Turks and Persians typically treated the non-combatants in territory held by their enemy as the enemy, even though the Christians and Circassian Muslims in Eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus were little better off than serfs and also unarmed.  

The scale of Turkish and Persian Muslim brutality in this region is unimaginable. In 1500, 1/3 of the population of the Ottoman Empire was Christian and about 80-90% of eastern Anatolia (Turkey) was Christian.  At least three million Armenian civilians were killed in the 16^th century alone.  Another three million were either enslaved or exiled by the Turks, or deported to central Persian by the Iranians. These numbers might be conservative. During one campaign, Turkish soldiers killed over 250,000 unarmed Christians in two days on one city!  

The Circassians didn’t fare much better. Although fewer Circassians were massacred, unless they were Christians, vast numbers of Circassians were deported to other parts of the Ottoman or Persian Empires. Furthermore, lacking full citizenship, their young men were drafted to serve in the vast armies and fleets that the Ottoman Empire assembled in its repeated efforts to capture the Vatican by the 1000^th anniversary of Mohammed’s death. Many never returned home.  Mohammed had prophesized in the Qu’ran that all Christendom would be conquered by the Muslims within 1000 years.

The Circassian alphabet enters the world of espionage.

 

Thousands upon thousands of Eastern Christian and Circassian prisoners of war fell into Spanish hands as Christianity won more and more battles against the Ottoman Armies. Christians were usually freed, but could not live in Spain unless they converted from Orthodox Christianity to Catholicism.  These battles occurred during the same period of time when Spain was colonizing the New World.  Most of the galley slaves in the Spanish navy were Muslim prisoners of war, captured in the wars with the Turks. Undoubtedly, a substantial percentage of those were Circassian Moslems.  The galley slaves in the Ottoman ships were mostly Christians.

Somewhere along the line, Spanish scholars became aware of the Circassian Medieval Script.  Jesuits devised a double cipher secrete code for the extensive network of Spanish spies in Europe called the Circassian Codex.  The coded messages were written in the Circassian alphabet, but the meanings of the letters were changed.  So even if an enemy was able to translate Circassian letters, the resultant translation would still appear to be gobbledygook.

During the 1600s and early 1700s the Circassian Codex became the favorite means of covert communication between Spanish spies, but also between exiled Sephardic Jews.  Very, very few people knew how to convert the Circassian alphabet into the Roman alphabet.  Even if they did, they would need a second cipher sheet to understand a message’s meaning.

The French became aware of the Circassian Codex around 1665 during a war with Spain in what is now Belgium.  Spanish agents within and near Versailles Palace communicated with each other as the planned the assassination of King Louis XIV.  One of the agents was captured then tortured until he confessed the full contents of the double cipher, which revealed the names of the other conspirators.  Thereafter, both Spain and France used the Circassian Codex in their espionage work, but the letters became increasingly similar to that of the original “Sequoyah” Syllabary.

Sephardic Jewish merchants and pirates often used their version of the Circassian Codex in a triple cipher which also included Arabic and Hebrew letters.  As such they were extremely difficult to translate by their enemies . . .  primarily the Spanish, Jesuits and Holy Office (Roman Catholic Inquisition).

Sequoyah’s mysterious ancestry

One of the major problems with determining anything factual about Sequoyah’s life is that there are at least three different versions . . .  mainstream history books, official Cherokee Nation and the far more detailed account by Traveler Bird, a Kitoowah Cherokee, who claimed to speak for Sequoyah’s descendants.  These versions have his father being either a white man (traditional), a halfbreed (Cherokee) or a full blood (Traveler Bird).  They have different dates for his birth and death.  They have different locations for his birthplace. Two say that Sequoyah never returned to the east after moving to Arkansas and that a Cherokee man named William Maw posed as Sequoyah, when his portrait was painted in Washington, DC by Charles Bird King.  

Two versions say that as a young boy, Sequoyah was lame so he couldn’t play sports and go hunting with the other Cherokee boys, yet two describe him going off at age 15 to fight for the Chickamauga Cherokees and three describe Sequoyah fighting in the Creek Red Stick War and going hunting out West when he was an elderly man.

Sequoya was not this famous man’s name.  It was his mother’s last name.  George Gist, the real name of this scholar, wanted to get rid of his European name, so he took his mother’s last name, probably without knowing its real meaning.  The Cherokee spelling of her adopted name is Wuteh S-si-qua-ya.  Here name may have actually been Wotah or Wutah.  Remember, it was written down by white English speakers. 

This is when it gets real interesting.  Sequoya is the Anglicization of the Cherokee-nization of Sikuya, which meant “slave” or “war captive” in the 18^th century Creek languages.  It makes no sense that his mother would be named a slightly modified Cherokee word for pig, siqua, as some references state.

Wuteh and Wutah are African and Georgia Gullah words for witch!  All three versions of his life acknowledge that Sequoyah and his wife were charged with witchcraft.  Two versions claim that he and his wife were tortured and maimed before escaping.  The sanitized Cherokee version says he wasn’t . . .  BUT . . . a well-researched biography on the Ridge Family (Major Ridge, John Ridge) states matter-of-factly that John Ridge, as commander of the Georgia Cherokee Light Horse raced up to North Carolina to save his friend Sequoyah and his wife as they were at the time being tortured until death for witchcraft.

It sounds like that Sequoyah’s mother was a Mustee (mixed African-Native American) slave from the Creek-speaking part of South Carolina or Georgia.   In the various versions of Sequoyah, she is either operator or the owner (highly unlikely) of a trading post. All three versions state that George Gist grew up in a household headed by his mother.  One version says he was an only child.  Another says that he had a couple of half-siblings, whose fathers are unknown.  The third version says that he was a full blooded son of a father and mother, living together with a large family.

In the late 1700s, almost all the Cherokee and Creek trading posts were owned by white Indian traders, based on the Savannah River in Augusta, GA or slightly farther south. They preferred using Mustee slaves or freewomen to manage their branch trading posts.  The Mustees were usually either mixed Uchee-African or Creek-African, whose cultures had long traditions of being involved with regional trade systems.

George Gist and his mother are described as being poor.  As such she would have had no capital to stock up a trading post.  If she actually owned the trading post, she would not have been poor.  She would have been one of the wealthiest Cherokee women in her area, and thus would have had Cherokee men “beating down her doors” to be her husband . . . or at least, live-in lover.  This would not to be the case if Wutah was known to be a witch.  Not being ethnic Cherokee, she would be immune to execution, but nevertheless, been taboo.

Along with Charles Hicks, David Hicks, David Vann and John Ridge,  Gist was among the survivors of the disastrous Battle of Etowah Cliffs in Rome, GA on October 17, 1793.  They fled to the Natchez village of Pine Log in what is now northern Bartow County.  Ridge’s sister lived there.  Gist lived for several years in Pine Log where he made a living as a silversmith for wealthy Cherokee families such as the Ridges and Vanns.

That leads to a very pertinent question.  If Gist lived in poverty with his mother until age 15 then was on the warpath until late 1793, how in the world did he learn how to make professional quality silverware.  That is skill that very few whites would have had? This is one of many contradictions in all the versions of Sequoyah’s life.

Did George Gist really create the letters for his syllabary?

All three versions of George Gist’s life agree that in 1824, the Cherokee National Council created a silver medal to honor his creation of the Cherokee Syllabary.  The mainstream story of Sequoyah says that he worked independent to create an entirely new syllabary over a period of 20 years . . . from when the Chickamauga War ended in 1793 until just before the War of 1812.   The Official Cherokee version says that he worked independently on entirely new syllabary symbols from the end of the Redstick War in 1815 to around 1821. 

The Traveller Bird version tells an entirely different story.  He stated that the Cherokees had a writing system for many centuries.  Supposedly, a “poor tribe from the west named the Talliwa arrived in their territory long in the past.” This tribe had a writing system, which was maintained on gold foil.  In gratitude for being taken in, the Taliwa taught the Taskegi Clan of the Cherokees how to write.  The Taskegi were known for their intelligence and powerful memories.  Afterward they kept the writing system and tribe’s history recorded on gold foil.

Cherokee tree mark in NW Georgia

According to Bird, the Taskegi writing system was utilized by the Chickamauga Cherokees in their war with the white settlers in Tennessee. Cryptic messages were carved or painted on to trees so war parties could communicate with each other.   While fighting for the Chickamauga’s learned this cryptic system.

Again according to Bird, the Cherokees continued to use the Taliwa symbols after there was peace.  The leaders of the Chickamaugas soon became the dominant faction of the Cherokee Nation.  Meanwhile, while working as a silversmith, Sequoyah began adapting these symbols and some more he created into a system that symbolized the syllables in the Cherokee language.  While fighting in the Red Stick War, Sequoyah began teaching the more sophisticated use of the Taliwa symbols to other Cherokee soldiers.

Facts:  Abstract symbols have been found on ancient trees within the territorial boundary of the Cherokee Nation in Georgia.   The memoir of Captain René de Laundonniére, Commander of Fort Caroline (1564-1565), specifically mentioned that the Apalache Creeks in Northeast Georgia manufactured gold foil and exported it to other tribes in the Southeast. He stated that the foil was used to record information. 

While camped out in the Tuskeegee Community, NC, I found a Sephardic Jewish inscription on the mountain overlooking Fontana Lake, which was dated September 15, 1615.  That means that Sephardic Jews were in direct contact with Taskegees by that date or earlier.

Eyewitness accounts by Richard Briggstock in 1653, James Needham & Gabriel Arthur in 1673 and Governor James Moore of Carolina in 1693, place Spanish and Portuguese colonists in North Georgia and Eastern Tennessee in the 1600s.  Needham and Arthur also encountered a large European town, built of brick, near the confluence of the Holston and French Broad Rivers.  The town contained a brick church with a bell tower containing a single massive bell.  The bell tolled three times a day to call Christians there to pray.  This is a precise description of Armenian, Georgian and Christian Circassian towns of that era in the Caucasus.

Horse manure:  Taliwa was also the name used by other Cherokee storytellers to label a mythical town on the Etowah River, which the Cherokees supposedly razed in 1755 and in doing so, captured all of North Georgia.  There was no tribe and no town named Taliwa, anywhere in the United States or Mexico.  The ruins that the Cherokees claimed were Taliwa, where of a large town abandoned around 1600 AD.  Archaeologists have never found an example of writing at the so-called Taliwa town site in Cherokee County, GA.

The Taskegi (Tuskegee in English) were a major branch of the Creek Confederacy.  They were originally located on the Little Tennessee River in present day Graham County, NC and were visited there in the spring of 1540.  Their neighbors to the east were the Chiaha, who were Itza Maya immigrants.  Taskegee Creeks where shown to still be living at that location on the 1701 map of Mexico and La Florida by the French mapmaker, Guillaume de Lisle.   By 1717, the majority of Taskegee  had been forced out of the North Carolina Mountains and were then shown living in Northwest Georgia and along the Upper Coosa River in Northeast Alabama. 

The Taskegee towns eventually settled on the Middle Coosa and Chattahoochee Rivers.  Nevertheless, there was a Cherokee village built on the burned out ruins of the Creek town of Taskegi.  The location is on the banks of Fontana Lake and is the source of the name of Tuskeegee Community. 

Plausible Speculations:  The word “Charakeys” first appeared on a map in 1715.  Their villages were shown to be located in the exact same region where Needham and Arthur encountered an Eastern Orthodox Christian town.  Prior to 1715, French maps show Northeast Tennessee occupied by Chiska, Shawnee, proto-Creek and Tongoria towns.

(1) It is possible that the origin of the Anglicized ethnic label, Cherakees, is the actual name that the Circassians called themselves . . . Cherikess.  The connection might seem far-fetched, but there were hundreds of thousands of Armenians, Georgians and Circassians wandering around the world at that time due to their expulsion by the Otttoman Empire.

(2) It is quite possible that interactions and marriages between Eastern Orthodox colonists and local indigenous peoples allowed the transfer of knowledge about writing systems to be partially absorbed by subsequent generations of mixed-heritage peoples.  Perhaps at some point, the descendants knew the alphabetical letters, but didn’t know their meanings.

(3)  French officers, marines and traders began exploring eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina in the 1680s.  By then senior officers involved with clandestine activities would have known the French version of the Circassian Codex.  The French built a large fortified trading post on Bussell Island at the confluence of the Tennessee and Little Tennessee Rivers during that period.  It was still there in 1715.  Perhaps

(4) The Sequoyah Syllabary may have been derived by George Gist from a Creek writing system, learned by his mother, Wuteh, Wutah or Wotah.  If she was indeed a slave, as indicated by her last name, there is no telling what her ethnic background was or who she had been in contact with in the past.  

A sample has been found of a Creek writing system from the mid-1700s. (See below)  I predates the Cherokee system by several decades.  Of course, Principal Chief Chikili presented a example of a complete Apalache-Creek writing system to the leaders of Savannah on June 7, 1735 . . . so the Cherokee’s claim to have been the only tribe in the United States to have ever been literate is just not true.  

If historians could ever determine how Sequoyah learned the skills of a silversmith, the understanding of the origins of his syllabary might become more obvious.  Until then there will always be many mysteries about this man, who called himself Sequoyah.

Moana's Tragedy of the Commons

Delightful bit of mythology interpretation in view of modern understanding.  Disney is really good at doing that.  Much of our culture demands this type of teaching tool and let us hope to see much more of it.

Our own work has uncovered an expansive alternate history supported by nasty things called evidence that presents humanity moving through history in much this way.  What about those Indians who rode red deer?  I do not need to go to New Zealand to find great material.

All good stuff.

Jeffrey Tucker 

 

Saturday, December 17, 2016

 https://fee.org/articles/does-moana-offer-economic-lessons/

 delirium is what I felt watching Moana, the 56th animated epic by Disney about a Polynesian tribe’s struggle to survive and the young girl (not a princess, she keeps saying) who leads them out of crisis. It is so stunningly beautiful, compelling, and moving. Animation has never looked this great, and the story is gripping from beginning to end. 

 

Moana gives us the right kind of multiculturalism.It also offers that special thing I look for in movies: a narrative that sets me off thinking about issues of political economy. More on that in a bit. 

I’m delighted to find that moviegoers agree: Moana has been met with high acclaim and is set to become as profitable as any movie of its class. But its popularity surprises me somewhat: it deals with a time, world, tradition, and people completely unfamiliar to most American audiences, and is released in a time that is alleged to be all about nationalist reaction to multiculturalism.

The attention to cultural authenticity in Moana is scrupulous to the point of being uncompromising, affecting even the voices of characters and the drawing of their faces and bodies. I only recognized some of the symbols and mythology because of my visit to New Zealand and encounter with Māori symbolism. Otherwise, I would have been completely lost. 

But here is a tribute to certain universal features of humanity. We need shelter. We seek security. We need sustenance. We weave stories to account for random features of the world that defy explanation. We have mothers and fathers who seek to teach their children but the children have wills of their own and go their own way. 

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In other words, Moana gives us the right kind of multiculturalism: the opportunity to develop the capacity to empathize with people completely unlike ourselves but who face problems and difficulties no different than our own. 

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Is this Communism? No

When nature provides enough resources available to feed everyone, there is no functional need to develop private property as a technology.Now, let’s talk about the economics of Moana. This tribe lives on a small island (probably now American Samoa) that seems to provide for all their needs. There are enough coconuts, fish, fruits, and resources for shelter for everyone. They work as a community to harvest and provide for themselves. We are told that they hold everything in common.

Are we watching the unfolding of some Rousseauian myth of the state of nature? I don’t think so. They do have private dwellings, private in the sense that “this is his” and “that is hers.” But the main resources on the island are not given property titles. Competent cultural anthropologists have documented many such cases in small tribes. When nature provides enough resources available to feed everyone, there is no functional need to develop private property as a technology in the sense we think of it today. In other words, this is not communism but merely a social acknowledgement of the island’s abundance. 

The Downside of the Commons

In the film, the people who are charged with harvesting coconuts discover a blight has ruined them. The same day, fishermen return with empty nets. They try to fish other parts of the island with no results. The food in general seems to be running out. People start to panic, and demand answers from the tribal chief. 

My immediate thought ran to the theory of the “tragedy of the commons.” This tribe was very successful but nature cannot provide for human needs without limit. At some point, overgrazing, overfishing, overharvesting, and overconsumption lead to shortages. Without capital investment, a complexification of division of labor, the emergence of the money economy, and (above all) the security of private ownership, humanity cannot survive with a growing population and shrinking resources.

The islanders believe that they are experiencing what others on other islands have experienced, a sudden loss of prosperity. How to explain it? There is no Adam Smith around to provide a scientific answer. 

Every myth has a reason for its existence. Here is where the myth-weaving begins. It is widely believed that all islands were created by the goddess Te Fiti, who created life and land from her powerful heart. One day, the demigod Maui stole the heart, thinking that he would give it away to humanity. But immediately, the island turned to darkness and a blight began to spread. He then loses the heart to the ocean. 

One thousand years later, this blight has finally arrived to the island where Moana Waialiki lives. She is chosen by the ocean to find Maui and help him return the heart to its rightful owner.

It’s a beautiful story, and it is roughly accurate as regards the ancient myths of these native peoples (though some critics have denounced the caricature of the demigod Maui). 

Every myth has a reason for its existence. This stuff isn’t just manufactured for entertainment. It is designed to account for realities that defy other explanation. 

My immediate thought when I was watching was exactly this. The beautiful myth that forms the plot of “Moana” was a substitute for modern economic thinking. The tribe experienced a tragedy of the commons. They needed capitalism. But the transition from common ownership to private ownership would also mean a dramatic cultural change, and there was no time for that: they needed food now. 

Island-Hopping

Moana is warned to never go beyond the reef but she discovers a hidden cave full of boats, indicating that her people are not mere island dwellers. They were once journeyers who went on adventures, moving from island to island. This also fits with the anthropological record. The natives peoples of this region did move from place to place, and my naïve mind always wondered why. This film provides the answer: they moved to find resources when faced with shortages.

The suffering of all islands began with the infringement on Te Fiti’s self ownership of her own heart. After all, it is not some vague longing for adventure that causes whole tribes to brave the seas on small boats. It is the economic fear of starvation, and that, in turn, comes about from an institutional failure to develop social norms delineating ownership rights.

Note this critical fact: the suffering of all islands began with the infringement on Te Fiti’s self ownership of her own heart. From that one crime flowed all the rest. The sin had to be propitiated. In the Disney version of the myth – expected spoiler! – the goddess eventually does get back her heart and then uses her powers to spread abundance throughout all the islands of the earth. 

Te Fiti’s heart was a fitting metaphor for what was discovered in Europe in the late middle ages and following: the best and most peaceful way to provide for everyone’s needs is through institutional change – not journeys and struggles and panics but through the emergence of the market economy that generates new wealth to feed a growing population.

The market economy begins with private property, and clearly Te Fiti is a fan, as we see when she so benevolently restores the great magical hook of the demigod Maui. He alone holds it in his hands, much to his delight and ours.

How One College Professor Learned to Love Homeschoolers

I admit that i was not expecting this. The fact is that the t4acher is highly motivated and was surely a motivated student in his or her own right.  Thus it was never taken lightly. Better yet goals were met continously.

So yes this is good news.

Now wee need to learn how to apply these skils in the school system.. 

How One College Professor Learned to Love Homeschoolers

Annie Holmquist 

 

Sunday, December 18, 2016

 https://fee.org/articles/how-one-college-professor-learned-to-love-homeschoolers/

College professor Ali Gordon wasn’t always a fan of homeschool students. Like many others, he believed that homeschoolers were sheltered individuals, unable to fend for themselves once they left the comfort of their own home.

But Dr. Gordon’s mind began to change as he encountered homeschool students in his courses in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering department of the University of Central Florida. In a recent op-ed penned for The Huffington Post, Dr. Gordon explained several reasons why he has become a proponent of homeschooling.

1. Homeschoolers are Problem-Solvers

Dr. Gordon’s research labs are challenging and require students to be inquisitive, think outside of the box, and solve problems. As he explains, “Parent-educated students that I’ve met exhibit a strong intellectual vitality and passion for exploring difficult concepts.”

2. Homeschoolers are Self-Directed

According to Dr. Gordon, the homeschooled student’s ability to problem solve is related to his ability to be an independent, self-directed learner. He notes:

“It is plausible that in their homeschool environments, they’ve already been given a vast number of opportunities to grow their capacities for self-direction. Consequently, their inclination for independent study seamlessly transfers to the scholarly research environment.”

3. Homeschoolers are High Achievers

Like any good researcher, Dr. Gordon likes to back up his observations with hard facts. When it came to homeschooling, the high marks students receive on tests were well suited to this purpose:

“On standardized college entrance exams, the homeschooled have scored, on average, at the 65th to 80th percentile on standardized academic achievement tests compared to the national average based on public school data. University officials have more recently recognized the value added by bringing these students to their campuses and attract them with separate entrance application sites with slightly modified guidelines, such as at the University of Central Florida, Georgia Tech, Stanford and Arizona State.”

4. Homeschoolers Bring Diversity

According to Dr. Gordon, the learning process is always furthered by a variety of opinions, backgrounds, and ideas. “Homeschooled students,” he notes, “have and will continue to add to the richness of our individual and collective experiences.”

It’s interesting to note that the qualities which endeared Dr. Gordon to homeschoolers are the very ones that the education system has been trying so desperately to instill in its students in recent years. Perhaps it’s time we recognize that parents at home are just as capable of instilling these traits in their students – if not more so – than the “experts” in institutional schools.

How the Soviets Stole Christmas

Does it ever occur to these fools that these ancient traditions serve an important cultural and community need.?  An exchange of gifts is a great way to make amends for oversights and slights acquired during the year and allows the slate to be either wiped clean or to establish a new position for the coming year.  That religion grabbed on to it was natural.  That the kooks did not try to dismiss it is awfully telling.

In the end it all washed away.

Even our materialism cannot ruin Christmas simply because it is meant to be a time of sharing and how better.

How the Soviets Stole Christmas 

Michael de Sapio 

 

Saturday, December 17, 2016

https://fee.org/articles/how-the-soviets-stole-christmas/

When totalitarian regimes (particularly those of the Left) come to power, one of the first things they typically do is destroy hallowed cultural symbols, the better to remake society from the ground up. The Soviet campaign to replace the symbols of Christmas is an interesting cultural chapter in the history of what Ronald Reagan famously called the “Evil Empire.” It is discussed here.

All symbols deemed religious and/or "bourgeois" were eradicated and replaced with new, secular versions.Following the Russian Revolution, the new atheist government began an anti-religious campaign. All symbols deemed religious and/or “bourgeois” were eradicated and replaced with new, secular versions. Thus Christmas (which in the Russian Orthodox calendar occurs on January 7) was abolished in favor of New Year's, and several traditional Christmas customs and characters received new identities. St. Nicholas/Santa Claus gave way to Ded Moroz or “Old Man Frost” (a popular figure originating in pagan times), and the new “nativity scene” featured him and his granddaughter the Snow Maiden in place of Joseph and Mary, sometimes with the “New Year Boy” added in place of Jesus. Christmas cards often featured Ded Moroz riding alongside a Soviet cosmonaut in a spacecraft emblazoned with a hammer and sickle.

Such images seem laughable now, but the impulse to destroy tradition is part and parcel of radical social movements throughout history. Think of the French Revolutionaries, who replaced the Christian calendar with a naturalist one, and even renamed the months and the days of the week so as to avoid any possible reference to Christianity.

And the Soviets weren't the only ones to have a problem with Christmas. The Puritans of seventeenth-century Boston were vehemently against it too. A “Publick Notice” from the period survives proclaiming the following:

The Observation of Christmas having been deemed a Sacrilege, the exchanging of Gifts and Greetings, Dressing in Fine Clothing, Feasting and similar Satanical Practices are hereby FORBIDDEN with the Offender liable to a fine of five shillings.

The one group hated Christmas because it was religious, and the other hated it because it was irreligious. History and human nature are full of paradoxes.

As for the Soviets, they eventually softened their stance. In 1935, the Communist Party official Pavel Postyshev wrote an editorial in Pravda mocking the extreme anti-Christmas faction. He declared that Christmas customs ought to be brought back for the enjoyment and benefit of children. (Needless to say, the goal vis à vis the children was always to make them obedient servants of the State.) After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Christmas became popular again.

All of which goes to show that while you can fight against tradition, you can't utterly destroy it. It may go underground, it may lie dormant, but once restrictions are lifted it will spring forth to new life. And any regime which tries to replace the familiar world with a synthetic one is fundamentally at war with the human spirit.

The Timeless Wisdom of Adam Smith

 

In the end, Adam Smith  caused all economic thinkers to attend to the natural metrics of free trade.  This has equally led to the emergence of the vital concept of liberty and that led directly to a fresh development protocol we call democracy.  Free trade demands free exchange which demands empowering the Demos.

The true danger to all this has been external intervention such as flooding a local market with cheap goods in order to produce a financial monopoly.  That was not so apparent in the time of Adam smith.

I think that the solution to all that is to establish a ten percent rule in which a new competitor is allowed to enter a market on a ten percent Per year rate unless all agree to an alternative.  This sets rules of engagement that promotes adjustment and recapitalization.

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The Timeless Wisdom of Adam Smith

Richard M. Ebeling 

 

Saturday, December 17, 2016

 https://fee.org/articles/the-timeless-wisdom-of-adam-smith/

Adam Smith’s central contribution to economic understanding was surely his demonstration that under an institutional arrangement of individual liberty, property rights, and voluntary exchange the self-interested conduct of market participants could be shown to be consistent with a general betterment of the human condition.

The emergence of a social system of division of labor makes men interdependent for the necessities, amenities and luxuries of life. But in the free, competitive market order every individual can only access what others in society can supply him with by offering them something in exchange that they value more highly than what is being asked from them in trade.

Thus, as Adam Smith memorably explained, as if by an “invisible hand” each individual is guided to apply his knowledge, ability and talents in ways that serve the trading desires of others as the means of fulfilling his own self-interested goals and purposes. Furthermore, not only is the need for government regulation and control of economic affairs shown to be unnecessary for societal improvement, Smith went on to argue that such government intervention was detrimental to the most successful advancements in human material and cultural life. (See, my article, “Adam Smith’s Air of Paradox”.)

Individual Freedom and Trade Among Nations

At the heart of Adam Smith’s criticisms of eighteenth century Mercantilism, with its presumption of a need for political direction and planning of economic activities for balance and prosperity, was his insistence that such political paternalism was needed neither in domestic trade and commerce nor in the buying and selling of imports and exports between countries.

If domestic produce can be bought as cheaply as that of foreign industry, regulation is evidently useless. If it cannot, it must generally be hurtful.

Adam Smith argued that it was superfluous and counter-productive for government to attempt to manage and direct the importing or exporting of goods and services to maintain a presumed “favorable” balance of trade. Each individual tries to minimize the costs that must be incurred in achieving his goals and ends. He only makes at home what is less expensive to make than to buy from others. And he buys desired goods from others only when those others can provide them at a lower cost in resources and labor and time, than if the individual attempted to produce those desired goods through his own self-sufficient efforts.

Thus, goods are purchased from producers in other countries only when they can offer them at a lower cost than manufacturing them in one’s own country. And, in turn, one purchases those foreign produced goods by supplying the foreign seller with some good or service at a lower cost than if he tried to produce it in his own land.

When governments, through regulations and controls, force a product to be produced at home that could be less expensively purchased from abroad, it is misdirecting scarce resources and labor into wasteful and inefficient uses. The result must be that the wealth of that nation – and the material wellbeing of its citizens -- is reduced by the amount by which more resources and labor must be devoted to making wanted goods than they could be obtained through a free system of international division of labor and peaceful, mutually beneficial exchange. Hence, it is more prudent for the prosperity of one’s own nation to leave production and trade to the self-interested actions of its individual citizens.

As Adam Smith explained in The Wealth of Nations (1776):

“To give the monopoly of the home-market to the produce of domestic industry, in any particular art or manufacture, is in some measure to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, and must, in almost all cases, be either a useless or a hurtful regulation. If the produce of domestic can be bought there as cheap as that of foreign industry, the regulation is evidently useless. If it cannot, it must generally be hurtful.

“It is the maxim of every prudent master of a family, never to attempt to make at home what it will cost him more to make than to buy. The tailor does not attempt to make his own shoes, but buys them of the shoemaker. The shoemaker does not attempt to make his own clothes, but employs a tailor. The farmer attempts to make neither the one nor the other, but employs those different artificers.

“All of them find it for their interest to employ their whole industry in a way in which they have some advantage over their neighbors, and to purchase with a part of its produce, or what is the same thing, with the price of a part of it, whatever else they have occasion for.

“What is prudence in the conduct of every private family can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom. If a foreign country can supply us with a commodity cheaper than we ourselves can make it, better to buy it of them with some part of the produce of our own industry, employed in a way in which we have some advantage . . .

“It is certainly not employed to the greatest advantage when it is directed towards an object which it can buy cheaper than it can make it . . . The Industry of a country, therefore, is thus turned away from a more, to a less advantageous employment, and the exchangeable value of its annual produce, instead of being increased, according to the intention of the lawgiver, must necessarily be diminished by every such regulation.”

All that was necessary, Adam Smith argued, was to leave men free to follow their own self-interests, and production and prosperity will be forthcoming in the directions and forms most advantageous to the members of the society as a whole, whether that trade is geared toward domestic or foreign demand and supply.

The Propagating of False Notions of Conflict Among Nations

Who were often the instigators for and beneficiaries of trade restrictions on imports and subsidies for exports? Adam Smith was scathing in his criticisms of manufacturers, merchants and agricultural special interests who wished to maintain or gain market share and greater profits from restricting the free flow of goods and services between countries through government action.

Those who today are usually labeled “crony capitalists” run to the government for favors, privileges, and protections from foreign and domestic competition, Adam Smith warned. Toward that end, they popularize fallacies and misunderstanding concerning the mutual benefits of trade among nations. Said Smith:

“Commerce, which ought naturally to be, among nations, as among individuals, a bond of union and friendship, has become the most fertile source of discord and animosity. The capricious ambition of kings and ministers has not, during the present and the preceding century, been more fatal to the repose of Europe, than the impertinent jealousy of merchants and manufacturers.

“The violence and injustice of the rulers of mankind is an ancient evil, for which I am afraid, the nature of human affairs can scarce admit of remedy. But the mean rapacity, the monopolizing spirit of merchants and manufacturers, who neither are, nor ought to be, the rulers of mankind, though it cannot perhaps be corrected, may very easily be prevented from disturbing the tranquility of any body but themselves.”

Smith warned of the “interested sophistry” of those desiring anti-competitive interventions and protections in the private sector through the political power of governments by creating false notions that trade is a zero-sum game in which if one side wins the other side must have lost, or that imports and a trade deficit are inherently harmful to the material well-being of a nation. These distortions and errors had to be refuted so it would be better understood that, “In every country it always is and must be in the interest of the great body of the people to buy whatever they want of those who sell it cheapest.”

The Mutual Prosperity of Nations is Beneficial to All

In addition, the material success of existing or potential trading partners is never a threat to the well being of one’s own nation. To the contrary, the more prosperous other nations may be, the greater the trading opportunities for selling one’s own specialized output as the means to acquiring the true benefit of trade – the obtaining of imports that foreign suppliers can make available at lower costs and better qualities and varieties than if one had to rely simply on one’s own nation’s labor skills and resources. “A nation that would enrich itself by foreign trade,” Adam Smith said, “is certainly most likely to do so when its neighbors are all rich, industrious, and commercial nations.” To try to impoverish other nations is a sure way to undermine one’s own nation’s rise to improved prosperity.

Abolishing Trade Restrictions for Prosperity and Against Privilege

The best means of assuring access to the benefits from international trade and to weaken, if not fully eliminate, the influence of those private interest groups wishing to use the government for their own ends at the expense of the remainder of society was to abolish in the most expeditious manner all barriers to a freedom of trade among nations.

Within one lifetime after Adam Smith's death, Great Britain abolished virtually all its domestic and foreign trade restrictions.

There were a number of exceptions and circumstances in which Adam Smith accepted government intervention in the patterns of trade. And he argued that when industries have long been secure behind trade barriers that have provided them with monopoly positions, to prevent severe disruption to the economic circumstances to those employed in these sectors of the economy it might be desirable to reduce the trade barriers gradually rather than all at once.

But he also emphasized that even if freedom of trade was established in short order, the displacement of even a significant number of workers would soon be remedied with alternative employments, as the economic gains from being able to purchase a variety of less expensive goods from aboard would provide the financial means for demanding many goods that previously consumers could not afford at the prior protected monopoly prices. Or as Smith more generally expressed it:

“The natural effort of every individual to better his own conditions, when suffered to exert itself with freedom and security, is so powerful a principle, that it is alone, and without assistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often encumber its operations.”

The Prejudices of the Public and the Power of the Interests

In spite of the cogency and convincingness of his arguments against Mercantilism, Adam Smith was far from confident that his ideas and those of others like him would ever succeed in bringing about the end to this eighteenth century version of central planning, and in its place the establishment of a “system of natural liberty” with freedom of trade.

His pessimism was due to two influences and forces in society, he said: The prejudices of the public – by which he meant the difficulty of getting the ordinary citizen to understand the logic of the market and the positive benefits from the “invisible hand” of unintended consequences. And the power of the interests – by which he meant the special interest groups that benefit from government privileges and favors, and who would resist any and all attempts to reduce or eliminate government regulations and redistributions that benefit them at others’ expense.

In Adam Smith’s own words:

“To expect, indeed, that the freedom of trade should ever be entirely restored in Great Britain, is as absurd as to expect that an Oceana or Utopia should ever be established in it.

“Not only the prejudices of the public, but what is much more unconquerable, the private interests of many individuals, irresistibly oppose it . . .The member of parliament who supports every proposal for strengthening this monopoly, is sure to acquire not only the reputation of understanding trade, but great popularity and influence with an order of men whose numbers and wealth render them of great importance.

“If he opposes them, on the contrary, and still more if he has authority enough to be able to thwart them, neither the most acknowledged probity, nor the highest rank, nor the greatest public service, can protect him from the most infamous abuse and detraction, from personal insults, nor sometimes real danger, arising from the insolent outrage of furious and disappointed monopolies.”

Fortunately for the material and cultural betterment of the world, Adam Smith was wrong in this prediction. Within one lifetime between his death in 1790 and the mid-1840s, Great Britain abolished virtually all its domestic and foreign trade restrictions, putting in its place a system of free enterprise and free trade. And through the Britain’s example and success with highly unrestricted freedom of trade, many other countries in Europe were influenced to follow the same course, if perhaps not as radically as in Great Britain or in the United States. Adam Smith, in other words, had underestimated the power of his own ideas.

Commerce as a Pathway for Improving Civil Society

The benefits of commerce and trade, Adam Smith argued, were not only the material improvements in man’s condition. It also served as a method for civilizing men, if by civilization is meant, at least partly, courtesy, and respect for others, and an allegiance to honesty and fulfillment of promises.

When a person makes perhaps 20 contracts in a day, the very appearance of a cheat would make him lose.

When men deal with each other on a daily and regular basis, they soon learn that their own wellbeing requires of them sensitivity for those with whom they trade.

Losing the confidence or the trust of one’s trading partners can result in social and economic injury to oneself.

The self-interest that guides a man to demonstrate courtesy and thoughtfulness for his customers, under the fear of losing their business to some rival with superior manners or etiquette to his own, tends over time to be internalized as habituated “proper behavior” to others in general and in most circumstances. Through this process, the other-orientedness that voluntary exchange requires of each individual in his own self-interest, if he is to attain his own ends, fosters the institutionalization of interpersonal conduct that is usually considered essential to a well-mannered society and cultured civilization.

Adam Smith explained this important and fortuitous benefit from commercial society in his Lectures on Jurisprudence (1766):

“Whenever commerce is introduced into any country, probity and punctuality always accompany it . . . It is far more reducible to self-interest, that general principle which regulates the actions of every man, and which leads men to act in a certain manner from views of advantage, and is as deeply implanted in an Englishman as a Dutchman.

“A dealer is afraid of losing his character, and is scrupulous in observing every engagement. When a person makes perhaps 20 contracts in a day, he cannot gain so much by endeavoring to impose on his neighbors, as the very appearance of a cheat would make him lose.

“When people seldom deal with one another, we find that they are somewhat disposed to cheat, because they can gain more by a smart trick than they can lose by the injury that it does to their character . . . Wherever dealing are frequent, a man does not expect to gain so much by any one contract as by probity and punctuality in the whole, and a prudent dealer, who is sensible of his real interest, would rather choose to lose what he has a right to than give any ground for suspicion . . .

“When the greater part of people are merchants they always bring probity and punctuality into fashion, and these therefore are the principle virtues of a commercial nation.”

Commerce And the End of Feudalism

Adam Smith also explained how the spontaneous emergence of commerce and opportunities for trade between foreign countries and faraway cities with the countryside slowly reduced the power of feudal lords and princes over those who lived and worked on their lands, thus setting in motion the processes that began the development of civil society with its more modern conceptions of individual rights and decentralized power.

In the self-sufficient environment of the medieval Manor, the only or primary source of needed necessities and luxuries desired by the Lord of the Manor was the output of those on his estate and the immediate village environment. The taxes and tithes that he received had no other outlet for being spent than on the employment of the several hundred of people over whom he ruled.

A revolution of the greatest importance to the public happiness was brought about by people, who had not the least intention to serve the public.

At the same time, the Lord’s expenditures represented for these tenants on his land and for the village craftsman virtually all the demand and income they might earn at any time. Thus, their obedience and subservience to the Lord of the Manor was not only based on his political authority and ownership of the land, but also because of their total dependency on his good graces in spending his wealth on those goods and services which they produced, partly to pay the taxes and tithes which they owed the Lord.

But with the emergence of commerce and trade from outside the confines of the Lord’s estate, he could now purchase desired goods from beyond his own community. This weakened his hold of dependency and obedience over those who lived and worked on his estate. At the same time, a growing market outside the estate meant that those village craftsmen and farming tenants now could find other markets for their goods besides the Lord. This reduced their dependency on his good graces and spending for their own survival and modest livelihood.

Adam Smith explained that this growing economic independence from the Lord served as a crucial element in people beginning to sense their freedom from his hold over them, and to demand formal liberty in their relationships with political authority without the fear, anymore, of his stranglehold over their material existence. In Adam Smith’s words in The Wealth of Nations:

“In a country which has neither foreign commerce, nor any of the finer manufactures, a great proprietor, having nothing for which he can exchange the greater part of the produce of his lands which is over and above the maintenance of the cultivators, consumes the whole in rustic hospitality at home . . .

“He is at all times, therefore, surrounded with a multitude of retainers and dependents, who . . . being fed entirely by his bounty, must obey him, for the same reason that soldiers must obey the prince who pays them . . . The occupiers on the land were in every respect as dependent upon the great proprietor as his retainers . . . In a country where the surplus of a large estate must be consumed upon the estate itself . . . a tenant . . . is as dependent upon the proprietor as any servant or retainer, whatever, and must obey him with as little reserve . . .

“The silent and insensible operation of foreign commerce and manufactures gradually . . . furnished the great proprietors with something for which they could exchange the whole surplus of their lands, and they could consume themselves without sharing it either with tenants or retainers . . .

“When the great proprietors of land spent their rents in maintaining their tenants and retainers, each of them maintains entirely his own tenants and his own retainers. But when they spend them in maintaining tradesmen and artificers, they may, all of them taken together, perhaps maintain as great . . . or a greater number of people than before.
“Each of them, however, taken singly, contributes often but a very small share to the maintenance of any individual of this greater number. Each tradesman or artificer derives his subsistence from the employment, not of one, but of a hundred or a thousand different customers. Through in some measure obligated to them all, therefore, he is not absolutely dependent upon any one of them.”

The slowly developing, but radical change in the relationships between the Lords and the commoners was an example, Adam Smith said, of those cases of human actions that transform society but are not instances of any intentional human design.

“A revolution of the greatest importance to the public happiness was in this manner brought about by two different orders of people, who had not the least intention to serve the public.

“To gratify the most childish vanity was the sole motive of the great proprietors . . . For a pair of diamond buckles perhaps, or something as frivolous and useless, they exchanged the maintenance, or what is the same thing, the price of the maintenance of a thousand men for a year, and with it the whole weight and authority which it would give them.

“The merchants and artificers, much less ridiculous, acted merely from a view to their own interest, and in pursuit of their own peddler principle of turning a penny wherever a penny was to be got. Neither of them had either knowledge or foresight of the great revolution which the folly of the one, and the industry of the other, was gradually bringing about.”

Prosperity, Independence and Freedom

John Miller, another Scottish philosopher who had been a student of Adam Smith’s at the University of Glasgow, highlighted how this change in relationships between the feudal lords and the commoner fostered the spirit and the politics of liberty and democracy in his own book, Origins of the Distinction of Ranks published in 1779, three years after Smith’s Wealth of Nations appeared. Explained Miller:

“The further a nation advances in opulence and refinement, it has occasion to employ a greater number of merchants, of tradesmen and artificers; and as the lower people, in general, become thereby more independent in their circumstances, they begin to exert those sentiments of liberty which are natural to the mind of man . . .

“While, from these causes, people of the low rank are gradually advancing towards a state of independence, the influence derived from wealth is diminished in the same proportion . .

“Thus, while fewer persons are under the necessity of depending upon him, he is daily rendered less capable of maintaining dependents; till at last his domestics and servants are reduced to such as are merely subservient to luxury and pageantry, but are of no use in supporting authority . . .

“It cannot be doubted that these circumstances have a tendency to introduce a democratical government. As persons of inferior rank are placed in a situation which, in point of subsistence, renders them little dependent upon their superiors; as no one order of men continues in the exclusive possession of opulence; and as every man who is industrious may entertain the hope of gaining a fortune; it is to be expected that the prerogatives of the monarch, and of the ancient nobility will be gradually undermined, that the privileges of the people will be extended in the same proportion and that power, the usual attendant of wealth, will be in some measure diffused over all the members of the community.”

Adam Smith’s Contribution to the Cause of Liberty and Prosperity

Adam Smith’s significance cannot be overstated in formulating the ideas and insights of that “system of natural liberty” that helped to foster an understanding of the workings of the free market order and its institutional prerequisites of individual freedom, private property, voluntary association and unrestricted, peaceful competition. Or as the prominent nineteenth century economist and popularizer of economic ideas, John R. McCulloch, said in 1853, “Adam Smith has an unquestionable claim to be regarded as the real founder of the modern system of Political Economy . . .The Wealth of Nations must be placed in the foremost rank of those works which have helped to liberalize, enlighten, and enrich mankind.”

He brought together in The Wealth of Nations many of the ideas about human nature, spontaneous order, competitive markets and more limited government that had been part of the central themes of the Scottish Moral Philosophers. Unique to Smith’s and the Scottish contribution in general is also the insight that whatever degree of liberty that has been acquired in the West has not been the result of a planned out linear process originating from some articulated “first principle.”

Liberty, as we understand its meaning and content today, emerged to a great extent as the unintended consequence of a series of unique historical events in certain parts of Europe, the full meaning and outcome of which the individual actors in this centuries-long drama often have had little or no inkling of in terms of the implications their own decisions and interactions were helping to bring about.

It should make us appreciative of the historical processes that have fostered liberty, and modest in our too frequent arrogance that it is in the power of some to remold men or remake society in some rarified conception of a “better world,” all according to socially engineered design. We do most for improving the conditions of mankind when we allow each individual to be free to use his own knowledge and abilities as he sees best in a setting in which market prices and competitive incentives direct him in how to apply himself in the social system of division of labor.

Or as Austrian economist, Friedrich A. Hayek, said at the time of the two hundredth anniversary of the publication of The Wealth of Nations in 1976:

“The recognition that a man’s efforts will benefit more people, and on the whole satisfy greater needs, when he lets himself be guided by the abstract signals of prices rather than by perceived needs, and that by this method we can best overcome our constitutional ignorance of most of the particular facts, and can make the fullest use of the knowledge of concrete circumstances widely dispersed among millions of individuals, is the great achievement of Adam Smith