Our friend Sydney Williams states that, “Across the globe, men and women have begun to stand up against elites who control government, unions, banks and large businesses. People have grown weary of the lies, the corruption and the self-dealing. Brexit in England was manifestation of this unrest, as was the Republican nomination of Donald Trump in the United States.”
Peggy Noonan writes in the Wall Street Journal that, “Those in power see people at the bottom as aliens whose bizarre emotions they must try to manage” and that, “This is about distance, and detachment, and a kind of historic decoupling between the top and the bottom in the West that did not, in more moderate recent times, exist.”
For several years now, I have been reading my friend Jawad Mian’s Stray Reflections. This is not to say that I agree with everything he says, but over the years I enjoyed his views on markets (frequently very contrarian) and his thoughts on life. In The Forgotten Man, Jawad addresses the same concerns Williams and Noonan brought up, but from an economic and financial perspective.
I wish all my readers a wonderful festive season. I also wish that my American readers vote wisely because as Plato observed that, “The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men” and as Frank Kent opined that, “The evils of government are directly proportional to the tolerance of the people.”
