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A Salute
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George Wythe’s Leadership Training School
by James A. Bacon
George Wythe American conservatives revere the Founding Fathers of the American republic as exemplars of the classic virtues — for good reason — but our nostalgia for the past does have blind spots (and I’m not talking about just slavery, an evil that everyone acknowledges). We rarely remark upon the fact that leadership of the early republic consisted of a goodly number of ditherers, drunkards, self-dealers and profiteers. As George Washington wrote to Benjamin Harrison, most members of Congress were idle, dissipated, and extravagant, and consumed by “an insatiable thirst” for getting rich.
That the newly formed United States managed to surmount the inevitable quirks and flaws of human nature Richmond author Suzanne Munson attributes in her new book, “First in Law, First in Leadership,” largely to the labors of one of America’s most insufficiently appreciated founders, George Wythe.
Wythe, a professor of law at the College of William & Mary, did more than shape the minds and character of luminaries such as Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe, who would become presidents; John Marshall, the most consequential Supreme Court justice in history; Henry Clay, the Kentucky legislator who became Speaker of the House; and senators, governors, judges, and other leaders too numerous to mention. He transformed the practice of law into a learned profession.
“Wythe taught more American leaders than any other mortal has since or ever will,” Munson quotes Taylor Revely, president emeritus of the College of William & Mary.
Oh, and by the way, Wythe was an ardent opponent of slavery who impressed his anti-slavery views upon Jefferson and many others. In 1806, as a judge later in life, he ruled in the case Hudgins vs. Wright to free a slave woman, Jackie Wright, and her two children. Drawing upon Virginia’s Declaration of Rights, he argued that that individuals “should be considered free until proven otherwise,” and that “freedom is the birthright of every human being.”
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Jeanine’s Memes
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Bacon Meme of the Week
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A Public Service Message from Bacon’s Rebellion
Res ipsa loquitur — the thing speaks for itself.
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What the War on the Deep State Means for Virginia
Image created by ChatGPT by James A. Bacon
U.S. Sen. Mark Warner warned Thursday that massive cuts and dislocations to the federal workforce under president-elect Donald Trump would be a “disaster for Virginia’s economy. … We would get hit worse than any other states.”
“When you think not just [about] the contractor workforce up in Northern Virginia, but all the folks … who are at our military installations as we go down through the peninsula into Hampton Roads, we would get hit worse than any other states,” Warner said, as reported by Virginia Business. “These kinds of attacks that Mr. Trump has made on the federal workforce, I think is unwarranted.”
Warner has good reason to be afraid. But what Virginians will mourn, much of the rest of the country will celebrate.
Trump has pledged an all-out war on what he calls the unelected “deep state.” He has said he will fire rogue administrators, slash federal payroll in the quest for efficiency, and relocate federal agencies and jobs to locales outside the Washington metropolitan area. He will have many people cheering him on, and I expect this is one campaign promise he will endeavor to make good on. We need to take it seriously.
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Actually, UVA Nursing Does Value Intellectual Diversity
Two days ago I posted an article about a seminar hosted by the UVA School of Nursing that discussed historical racism in the profession and maintained that “structural racism” and “bias” persists to this day. I took exception to the argument, and went on to suggest that UVA Nursing, and UVA generally, gives platforms to so-called “anti-racists” but not to anyone who contests their ideas.
Kim Acquaviva Kimberly D. Acquaviva, a nursing faculty member who teaches U.S. health policy, vigorously disagrees. I present her response as a counterpoint to my article. — JAB
I read yesterday’s article about my colleague Dominique Tobell’s work and was disappointed you didn’t do your usual rigorous research before publishing it. Teaching nurses how to eradicate structural racism is something AACN, our accrediting body, calls upon us to do. Attached are screenshots of two of AACN’s advanced-level nursing education competencies.
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Hat’s Off to UVA Student for Keeping His Hat On
Simon Goldstein wearing the offending cap by James A. Bacon
Simon Goldstein, a fourth-year computer science major at the University of Virginia, grew up in a non-religious family. His father’s family was Jewish and his mother’s background was Christian, but they didn’t practice their ancestral faiths beyond celebrating Hanukkah and Christmas. As he got older, some Christian friends challenged him to think about his religious beliefs. A friend took him to church, he began reading the Bible, and he came to believe that Jesus was the son of God. Today, Goldstein attends a Baptist Church in Charlottesville.
Not long ago, he spotted a cap on X (Twitter) that said, “Make America Christian Again,” which he saw as a play on “Make America Great Again,” and he bought it.
“I like that message,” he says. “I found the hat humorous. But seriously, I would like America to return to how it was in the past” as a mostly Christian nation. He’s politically conservative, but he’s not a so-called “Christian nationalist.” He doesn’t believe in imposing his views on anyone. He’s just hoping for a great awakening. “I’m not telling anyone to leave or convert or die. But it would be my hope for everyone to become Christian.”
This fall Goldstein began wearing the cap to class and around the Grounds. Not everyone saw the humor in it. Indeed, on October 24, he received an email from Nicole Thompson, senior compliance director for UVA’s office of Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights (OECR).
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Griffith And Cline Win Re-election Landslides
Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-9, left) and Rep. Ben Cline (R-6) celebrate at Roanoke Co. GOP Election Night Party Nov. 5, 2024. The Cline daughters are to the right. (photo/Scott Dreyer) by Scott Dreyer
Two congressmen representing the western third of the state of Virginia attended a Roanoke County GOP Election Night party at the Tanglewood Holiday Inn on Tuesday. A cautiously optimistic crowd had gathered. Early numbers nationwide looked good for President Trump and other Republicans, but since Virginia is on the East Coast and polls in many states were still open, a bigger picture was still unclear.
In attendance were friends, family, and supporters of the congressmen, as well as some local elected officials. They included State Senators Chris Head, David Suetterlein, Del. Joe McNamara, and Roanoke County Supervisor Tammy Shepherd, who won re-election that day unopposed. The evening was emceed by Roanoke County GOP Chairman Chris Newton.
However, by 9:00 p.m. the efficient Virginia election officials had already released numbers showing both Reps. Morgan Griffith (VA-9) and Ben Cline (VA-6) had won lopsided victories.
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“She’ll Be Destroyed on Social Media by Noon”
From MSNBC pundit Joe Scarborough this morning on the context of the 2024 elections:
“You know, my daughter at the University of Virginia, she’s afraid to raise her hand in class because if she says something that’s politically incorrect, she will immediately be cancelled. She’ll be shunned from class. She’ll be destroyed on social media by noon. So, they just sit in class quiet….”
“If any of you out there say, oh, that’s just a conservative, a White Southern guy da-da-da, that’s why you’re losing. That’s why you’re losing. Because that’s what I heard. I didn’t hear it from Republicans. I didn’t hear it from Trumpers. I heard it from Democrats over the past three or four years: Their kids were afraid to talk in class and say something unpopular because they would be canceled. And it’s an epidemic….
“It happens in New York City schools. It happens in colleges. And all of this adds up. People go, come on, come on, this is crazy.”
Not the kind of word-of-mouth we like seeing for UVA. –– JAB
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Democrats Stayed Home
by Joe Fitzgerald
17,993 people voted in Harrisonburg in 2016.
17,086 voted in 2020.
15,051 voted in 2024.
Another 2,351 voted provisionally on Election Day, meaning they were allowed to register and vote but their registration must be recorded and confirmed before their vote is counted. If they are all accepted, that could bring the total to 17,402. For comparison purposes, those 2,351 would have been turned away in 2020 because they were not registered.
The 2,351 are the voters who didn’t know they needed to register, or didn’t know if they already were. It will be interesting to see the split among low-information voters or, less charitably, whose voters are more low-information. (There is also charity in calling them low-information.)
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Dems Won in Virginia, But GOP Narrowed the Gap
Map credit: Virginia Public Access Project by James A. Bacon
Virginia looks like a red state if you look at voting results displayed on a map like the one above, but it’s still a blue state where it counts, which is in the cities and suburbs where the votes are. Democrat Party strength in urban cores and inner suburbs swamped Republican strength in small towns and rural areas. Virginia voted to elect Kamala Harris as president, return incumbent Tim Kaine to the U.S. Senate, and give six of eleven congressional districts to Democrat Party candidates.
You can read the top-line national election results almost anywhere, so I won’t tarry with them here. I’m more interested in documenting what I see as the evolving balance of power of the two major political parties in the state. The GOP is still in the game.
Comparing the 2024 election results (as of Wednesday morning with 99%+ of precincts reporting, according to the Virginia Public Access Project), we note the following:
- Donald Trump didn’t win quite as many votes in Virginia in 2024 as in 2020 — 1,949,000 compared to 1,963,000. But Kamala Harris saw her vote total compared to Biden’s erode even more — 2,302,000 compared to 2,412,000. The Democratic Party margin of victory slipped from about 10% to about 5%;
- Democrat Tim Kaine’s margin of victory over Republican challenger Hung Cao shrank compared to Democrat Senator Mark Warner’s margin over his challenger Daniel Gade — 353,000 votes versus 532,000;
- Adding up the votes for Ds and Rs in the eleven house districts, Democrats garnered more votes but Republican Party candidates chipped away at the Dem advantage. Comparisons between 2024 and 2020 get tricky because 9th district Congressman Morgan Griffith faced no competition four years ago, so the vote total for Democrats in that district was 0. Excluding the results for the 9th, the Democrat Party advantage contracted from 542,000 votes to 311,000. Given the fact that Griffith racked up a 179,000-vote lead this time around, the overall gap this year was smaller than those numbers indicate. All told, Dem candidates scored 51.6% of the vote in 2024 (excluding minor party candidates) and GOP candidates 48.4%.
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The Election for Virginia’s Local Offices
From the Tangier Island Website by James C. Sherlock
Political bloggers, including this one, tend to focus on Virginia’s largest jurisdictions.
But the Commonwealth, and certainly our democracy, is distinguished also by its small towns. The efforts of the citizens of those small jurisdictions to govern themselves on local matters are inspiring. They provide a lesson to the rest of us.
Using the Virginia Department of Elections local offices website, I have compiled some facts about this election in Virginia. The downloaded data highlight those small towns.
One thousand three hundred and nine Virginia citizens are running for local office. That is one out of every 5,884 adult citizens of the Commonwealth overall. But in Virginia’s small towns, it takes a lot higher level of participation to make things run. Though often it is the bad ones who make headlines, writ large we owe all of the candidates our thanks.
Of the candidates for local office,
- 34 are running as Democrats, 27 as Republicans and the rest as independents.
- 583 are incumbents
Participatory democracy at a very high level. Of Tangier’s 241 residents, 13 are running for mayor or town council. Of Clinchco’s 244, four are running for mayor.
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Are UVA Nurses Racist?
View video here: UVA Health – Dynamics of Prejudice: Antiracist Nursing Education Highlight Reel by James A. Bacon
Last month the University of Virginia School of Nursing sponsored an online event: “Dynamics of Prejudice: Antiracist Nursing Education 1968-1978.” A major theme to emerge from the presentation was that white nurses respond defensively when called racist and their reluctance to acknowledge their racism creates obstacles for “anti-racism.” The speaker, Cory Ellen Gatrall with the University of California-San Francisco, labeled white nurses’ resistance to hearing hard truths about race as “white discomfort.”
Although Gatrall’s research focused on the history of nursing a half century ago, she assured listeners that the power structure that supports racism is still with us:
‘The pattern of weaponizing white discomfort, especially within ostensibly white progressive spaces, has not changed,’ Gatrall said. ‘Nor has the outside power granted to whiteness and white comfort by racialized systems, including professionalism in academia as well as the nonprofit-industrial complex.’
“This was a powerful and provocative presentation,” exuded Dominique Tobbell, an endowed UVA professor and director of the Center for Nursing Historical Inquiry, who hosted the event. “It has ongoing relevance to nursing students today. … I’m looking forward to assigning more of your work to my students.”
These people owe UVA nurses an apology.
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Mayoral Non-Endorsement & a Self-Serving ($50K) Kumbaya Study
City workers singing kumbaya. Image created by ChatGPT by Jon Baliles
Today is Election Day and a free issue for all RVA 5×5 subscribers! If you haven’t voted, be sure to get out and do so!
Speaking of voting, today’s issue is about Mayor Stoney’s press conference last week in which he released a city-funded study to prove everything is fine at City Hall and claimed none of the candidates running to succeed him are audacious enough.
As people go to the polls today to vote for a new mayor, it is worth looking back at last week’s press conference held by Mayor Stoney at which he simultaneously said none of the candidates on the ballot have the vision to earn his endorsement while he also talked up a month-old report conducted by a hired consultant that found (after being paid $49,500) City Hall was running like a Swiss watch and that no one should be fired or replaced when the new mayor takes office in January.
The message that Stoney, who is term-limited from running again, wanted to put forward was that people are concerned about real issues and do not include the functioning of City Hall as a serious concern, even though all five candidates for the office have said repeatedly they will work hard to fix City Hall. All five candidates have said that they are going to work on listening to the people and employees and find ways to improve processes. None of the five have attacked Stoney directly, but none of them have said they would continue the great work of the Stoney Administration (or identified what that has been) or said they would be a third term. In fact, all five have said they would replace Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) Lincoln Saunders, who is Stoney’s best friend and was appointed CAO despite lacking any experience running a municipality, organization, or business.
