The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: http://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/1291324
A-8 Wednesday, September 23, 2020 The Press-Dispatch OPINION Submit Letters to the Editor: Letters must be signed and received by noon on Mondays. Email: editor@pressdispatch.net or bring in a hard copy: 820 E. Poplar Street, Petersburg Race for the Cure By Star Parker Lucid Moments By Bart Stinson Pres. Trump brokers Middle East peace and prosperity New York Times columnist Thom- as Friedman observed in a column he wrote in 1996 that "no two countries that both have a McDonald's have ev- er fought a war against each other." Some have looked into how iron- clad this rule is. But, in general, the point is pretty powerful. The assumption is that countries that have American fast food fran- chises are generally interested in freedom of commerce, and that the more a nation's focus is on commerce and economic prosperity, the less it is interested in war. This provides perspective on the new historic peace agreement signed by the United Arab Emirates, Bah- rain and Israel, the so-called Abra- ham Accords. What has driven the seemingly un- imaginable to happen? Two Muslim Persian Gulf states stepped out on their own and signed a peace agreement with the Jewish state of Israel; moreover, they did so without any kind of agreement hav- ing been reached between Israel and the Palestinians. This was once thought highly improbable, if not im- possible. One useful place to look to get a handle on what's happening is the Heritage Foundation Index of Eco- nomic Freedom. The index ranks 180 countries around the world ac- cording to how economically free they are. Factors determining economic freedom include the effectiveness of law protecting private property, the overall fairness and quality of the court system; size of government and level of taxation; the ease with which businesses can open and op- erate; and the freedom to trade and invest. We find that the United Arab Emir- ates is not just the most economically free of all the Persian Gulf states; it is one of the most economically free countries in the world. It ranks No. 18 out of 180 countries, one down from the United States. Israel is also among the most eco- nomically free countries in the world, ranking No. 26. Immediately after the UAE stepped up to make peace with Is- rael, Bahrain followed suit. Bahrain ranks 63rd on the Heritage list, also not bad. It is one above France. This is a wake-up call for the whole world. Power, force, hate, destruction: These things lead nowhere except to the perpetuation of human suffering. Creation, not destruction, is the answer. And this happens when ba- sic rules are respected, starting with law, ownership and private proper- ty — in other words, economic free- dom. Commerce is the finest of human cooperation, where people work to- gether, each doing what they do best, to produce, trade and create greater and greater prosperity. Did these two Arab states betray the Palestinians by going ahead on their own and making peace with Is- rael? The opposite. They did them a great favor. They are showing the Palestinians by example what road leads to peace. I wrote a column 10 years ago called "The Simple Path to Middle East Peace." The Israelis had unilaterally pulled out of Gaza and turned it all over to the Palestinians, who had full sover- eignty. Instead of using the opportunity to start building a country, the Pal- estinians started firing missiles into Israel. The Palestinian prime minis- ter announced, "We are telling the world, today Gaza, tomorrow Jeru- salem." President Donald Trump has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for brokering this historic deal, and he should get it. He understood that the UAE, Bahrain and Israel are interested in building prosperity, and he tapped into these positive sentiments to lay the groundwork for a new Middle East peace. There is a word for this: leader- Continued on page 9 Continued on page 9 Continued on page 9 Overturning election results I was a little shocked last month when I read that Hillary Clinton said Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden should not concede the elec- tion this year "under any circum- stances." She explained that she believes this "because I think this is going to drag out, and eventually I do believe he will win if we don't give an inch, and if we are as focused and relent- less as the other side is." But "any circumstances" means no matter what. It would include a Trump landslide, and it would in- clude Trump winning the elector- al college while losing the popular vote. Surely, I thought, Democrats will abide by the election results. Even Al Gore eventually conceded. But there's a new plan now. The same people who believed the Con- stitution was a "living document," subject to drift and re-interpreta- tion, now believe that they needn't take vote-counting literally. Not if they're relentless enough. Just ten days into the new Republi- can presidency in 2017, Foreign Pol- icy published Three Ways to Get Rid of President Trump Before 2020, by George Soros protege Rosa Brooks. We ordinarily get rid of presidents by voting them out after their first term, but Brooks objected that "four years seems like a long time to wait," and laid out plans for overturning the election results of 2016 much quick- er. One of her options was impeach- ment. What she liked about that plan is that "Congress doesn't need evi- dence of actual treason or murder to move forward with an impeachment: Practically anything can be consid- ered a 'high crime or misdemeanor.'" But the downside was that "im- peachments take time: months, if not longer - even with an enthusias- tic Congress." There's always the 25th Amend- ment, which is the Constitutional procedure by which half the Cabi- net and a two-thirds majority of Con- gress can declare a president unfit, and empower the vice president with presidential authority. Brooks called this "an appeal to Vice President Mike Pence's ambi- tions. Surely Pence wants to be pres- ident himself one day, right? " In the snake pit of Washington DC, this proposition apparently strikes people like Brooks as plau- sible. Pence's loyalty, his friendship with the president, must seem utter- ly foreign to them. Finally, she floated the possibility of a military coup, or at least a mu- tiny. This is not as far-fetched as it seems at first blush. President Obama's notorious purge of the armed forces left Trump with a left-leaning senior of- ficer corps. BLM Marxism and crit- ical race theory have made inroads among young officers via mandato- ry sensitivity training and indoctri- nation. A flyer distributed at mandato- ry Army race training recently de- scribed the "Make America Great Again" slogan as a covert statement of white supremacy. If an officer be- lieves that, it's not a major leap for him to join the mutiny against a pres- ident he believes to be illegitimate. Brooks has penetrated the mili- tary-academic complex. She is an adjunct scholar at the Modern War Institute at West Point, and a senior fellow in Arizona State University's Future of War program. Her second husband (whose name she did not take) is a retired Army colonel. For all these reasons, Brooks can speak of a military conspiracy against the president without inspir- ing laughter. Nearly four years have passed without Trump-haters getting rid of the president, but the game has been good to Brooks. One website estimates her personal net worth at around $10 million, roughly the same as Boris Becker or Clint Eastwood. Brooks co-founded the Transition Integrity Project (TIP) in December. That organization convened about 67 elite Trump antagonists this summer to role-play four possible election out- come scenarios. We needn't specu- late about the proceedings, because TIP published its report online for all to see. The heavy hitters were cheek by jowl: erstwhile Republican John Ka- sich played his nemesis Trump. Clin- It's hard to believe September is almost gone. I could sense it in the air. It's getting cooler which is nice. Leaves are starting to fall. Soon we will notice evenings creep in earli- er and flowers will start wilting. You know what's next. It will be the cy- cle of fall and then winter. I try to focus on what is good about our day-to-day life during the sum- mer despite the pandemic. For in- stance, there have been lots of vege- tables and fruits that grew well, and I have been blessed with neighbors and friends who have given us some of their produce, especially toma- toes, squash, cucumbers, potatoes, peppers, etc. One of my daughters has a small farm in a nearby town and frequent- ly invited us to enjoy their crops like sweet corn, peppers and zucchini, and the tilapia raised. We had such a good time being with the grandkids, enjoying their homemade meals and their compa- ny, and seeing them grow fast. One of them who is ten years old asked me once to ride their golf cart so she could show the areas where they planted their vegetables. She did not tell me ahead of time that the ride would be uphill and down- hill on some muddy areas. So, silly me, I said I would be so delighted to go with her and two of her younger siblings. At first it was nice and smooth but as we went deeper in- to the woods, I felt I made a mistake. It felt like I was rid- ing a roller coaster, without any re- straint or seatbelt, and as they all screamed with delight at each dip, I also screamed, but with a different message: "Let's get back to your house! " I realized that if I fell out of the cart, I'd be calling 911. Finally, she said, "Lets go back through another route because there are more muddy patches and more excitement." A fter she realized I was not enjoying the adventure, we turned around and slowly came back to the house for my recovery from P TSD. A cool drink of lemonade and a soft couch to sit on felt good once we were in safe haven. The moral of the sto- ry: there comes a time when you hit a certain age when the defi- nition of what is fun for the younger ones is not neces- sarily fun for old fogies like me. I'll always ride a rocking chair but not AT Vs. Anyone out there feel the same? • • • Remember the mini-travel- ogue I shared in the last few articles I wrote, like ten best countries, ten best states in the U.S., ten best cities in the U.S.? I'd like to make sure the reader un- derstood my article was purely a cu- riosity on my part, and a desire to en- tertain myself. It was a good antidote to the feel- ing of being cooped up and unable to travel much during these weird times. There were lots of positive comments the producer focused on, and pictures of the towns were also shown. The comments presented by the Youtube producer certainly do not present absolute authoritative in- formation, but to my interpretation, they were his perspective based on My Point of View By H. K. Fenol, Jr., M.D. Best places to live in Indiana Templeton Address By Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Men have forgotten God Continued on page 9 FORGOTTEN The following is a speech Nobel laureate, Orthodox Christian author and Russian dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn gave when he received the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion in May of 1983. It is entitled "Godlessness: the First Step to the Gulag." His address explained how the Russian revolution and the com- munist takeover were facilitated by an atheistic mentality and a long pro- cess of secularization, which alienat- ed the people from God and tradition- al Christian morality and beliefs. He rightly concluded: "Men have forgot- ten God; that's why all this has hap- pened." The text of his Templeton Ad- dress is provided below. The paral- lels with the current crisis and moral decay in American society are strik- ing and frightening some 37 years lat- er. Those who have ears to hear, let them hear. "MEN HAVE FORGOTTEN GOD" – BY ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN As a survivor of the Communist Holocaust, I am horrified to witness how my beloved America, my adopt- ed country, is gradually being trans- formed into a secularist and atheis- tic utopia, where communist ideals are glorified and promoted, while Judeo-Christian values and morality are ridiculed and increasingly eradi- cated from the public and social con- sciousness of our nation. Under the decades-long assault and militant radicalism of many so-called "liber- al" and "progressive" elites, God has been progressively erased from our public and educational institutions, to be replaced with all manner of de- lusion, perversion, corruption, vio- lence, decadence and insanity. It is no coincidence that as Marxist ideologies and secularist principles engulf the culture and pervert main- stream thinking, individual freedoms and liberties are rapidly disappear- ing. As a consequence, Americans feel increasingly more powerless and subjugated by some of the most radi- cal and hypocritical, least democrat- ic, and characterless individuals our society has ever produced. Those of us who have experienced and witnesses first-hand the atroci- ties and terror of communism under- stand fully why such evil takes root, how it grows and deceives, and the kind of hell it will ultimately unleash on the innocent and the faithful. God- lessness is always the first step to- wards tyranny and oppression! More than half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hear- ing a number of older people offer the following expla- nation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened. Since then I have spent well-nigh 50 years working on the history of our Revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hun- dreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight vol- umes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened. What is more, the events of the Russian Revolution can only be un- derstood now, at the end of the cen- tury, against the background of what has since occurred in the rest of the world. What emerges here is a pro- cess of universal significance. And if I were called upon to identify briefly the principal trait of the entire 20th century, here too, I would be unable to find anything more precise and pithy than to repeat once again: Men have forgotten God. The failings of human conscious- ness, deprived of its divine dimen- sion, have been a determining fac- tor in all the major crimes of this century. The failings of human conscious- ness, deprived of its divine dimen- sion, have been a determining factor in all the major crimes of this centu- ry. The first of these was World War I, and much of our present predica- ment can be traced back to it. It was a war (the memory of which seems to be fading) when Europe, bursting with health and abundance, fell into a rage of self-mutilation which could not but sap its strength for a centu- ry or more, and perhaps forever. The only possible explanation for this war is a mental eclipse among the leaders of Europe due to their lost awareness of a Supreme Power above them. On- ly a godless embitterment could have moved ostensibly Christian states to employ poison gas, a weapon so obvi- ously beyond the limits of humanity. The same kind of defect, the flaw of a consciousness lacking all di- vine dimension, was manifested af- ter World War II when the West yielded to the satan- ic temptation of the "nuclear umbrella." It was equivalent to saying: Let's cast off wor- ries, let's free the younger generation from their duties and obligations, let's make no effort to defend ourselves, to say nothing of defending oth- ers-let's stop our ears to the groans emanating from the East, and let us live instead in the pursuit of happiness. If dan- ger should threaten us, we shall be protected by the nuclear bomb; if not, then let the world burn in Hell for all we care. The pitifully helpless state to which the contemporary West has sunk is in large measure due to this fatal error: the belief that the defense of peace depends not on stout hearts and steadfast men, but solely on the nuclear bomb… Today's world has reached a stage which, if it had been described to pre- ceding centuries, would have called forth the cry: "This is the Apoca- lypse! " Yet we have grown used to this kind of world; we even feel at home in it. Dostoevsky warned that "great events could come upon us and catch us intellectually unprepared." This is precisely what has happened. And he predicted that "the world will be saved only after it has been pos- sessed by the demon of evil." Wheth- er it really will be saved we shall have to wait and see: this will depend on our conscience, on our spiritual lucid- ity, on our individual and combined efforts in the face of catastrophic cir- cumstances. But it has already come to pass that the demon of evil, like a whirlwind, triumphantly circles all five continents of the earth… By the time of the Revolution, faith had virtually disappeared in Russian educated circles; and amongst the uneducated, its health was threat- ened. In its past, Russia did know a time when the social ideal was not fame, or riches, or material success, but a pious way of life. Russia was then steeped in an Orthodox Christianity which remained true to the Church of the first centuries. The Orthodoxy of that time knew how to safeguard its people under the yoke of a foreign occupation that lasted more than two centuries, while at the same time fending off iniquitous blows from