The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: http://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/751731
The Press-Dispatch Wednesday, November 16, 2016 D-1 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 A friend of mine told me a few months ago what he expected the headlines would read the day after the presidential election. "Lucifer beats Satan." His point, of course, was that, as never before, the key idea that the USA is a free nation under God, has never been pushed further off the political stage. There was no pretense, no hint in this election, about the ideal of America aspiring to be a "shining city on a hill," the phrase of Chris- tian pilgrim John Winthrop, often referred to by President Reagan. If the discourse of this election re- flects what is happening in our na- tion, we have lost touch with our principles and ideals. In his farewell speech, Reagan described his vision of that "shin- ing city." It is a "tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than the oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds, living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and heart to get here." Or, in the words of George Washington in his farewell address to the nation, "Of all the dispositions and hab- its which lead to politi- cal prosperity, religion and moral- ity are indispensable supports ... reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morali- ty can prevail in exclusion of reli- gious principle." Whereas we once thought of freedom as personal responsi- bility, we've just gone through a whole election cycle without this idea seeing the light of day. The whole debate has been about whom to blame for our prob- lems and what politician will solve them for us. This certainly is not my idea of America. The idea of our free country that captured my attention years ago was about prin- ciples, where govern- ment is about protect- ing life, liberty, and property. It is about a society of law, guaran- teeing personal free- dom that starts with the Bible. The late Emory University law professor Harold J. Berman rem- inisced, in his writings, about the America where he grew up say- ing, "if you had asked Americans where our system of law came from, on what it was ultimately based, the overwhelming majori- ty would have said, "The Ten Com- mandments," or "the Bible," or per- haps "the law of God." "In the past two generations," As I flipped between watch- ing Mayberry RFD reruns and NBC, I began to sense what the media couldn't comprehend that solid Clinton states were going Trump; at least the media whis- pered "could he could pull it off." When Pennsylvania went Trump around 10 PM, I said, "Hillary is in trouble." The Mainstream Media just could not comprehend what it was witnessing; some of the reporters editorializing was irrational. By 11PM, it was Pennsylvania, a typical democrat state that stood between Trump and the White House. Pennsylvania went Trump; Trump was going to win! Fox News Headline: "Trump Beats The Media And The Estab- lishment In Pulling Off The Great- est Upset Ever;" USA Today: "Don- ald Trump Stuns The World, Elect- ed USA's 45th president;" Wash- ington Post: "Donald Trump Just Blew Up The Electoral Map;" and The Durant Daily Democrat: "Trump Rides Chutzpah To Victo- ry In Presidential Race." Shock! NBC reported [Wednesday Novem- ber 9th] that Clin- ton was confident of winning as the polls closed last Tuesday, while Trump's inter- nal polling suggest- ed a loss, but he was hopeful. The polls showed Hillary up by 2 percent. As I write, the popular vote stands at 202,304 votes for Clin- ton than Trump. [That is 0.00169 percent difference of 119,425,696 total votes cast.] But the shocker is that we select the president by the Electoral Col- lege by states: Clinton has 228 del- egates while Trump has 279, with 31 undecided. Clinton was magnanimous in her public concession speech, and Trump was gracious. There are groups of sore losers protesting across the nation but President Obama reminded the tantrum throwers that we have a peaceful tradition of transfer of power and he will do his part. The question among the "I Hate Trump" movement has to answer is "how did he win? " Simply put, it was a pushback against at least two decades of bad trade policy and political correct poli- tics. The very phrase "Politically Correct" is ambiguous. The term emerged in the 1980s and slowly took on a life of its own and was hijacked by the pro- gressives and liberals to squelch speech to the point that freedom of expression is in jeopardy. To demand certain words and thoughts be banned from exis- tence is ludicrous. Honest academ- ics and students of history know "ideas are bulletproof." You think National Socialism is Continued on page 2 Continued on page 2 Continued on page 2 Continued on page 2 Observations by Thomas Sowell The Weekly by Alden Heuring Painful choices Points to Ponder by Rev. Ford Bond There are issues and there are issues What happened to American ideals? Pursuit of the Cure by Star Parker Let's talk sense about the elec- tion. Nothing is to be gained by re- fusing to face the hard facts. What are those facts? First of all, neither Hillary Clin- ton nor Donald Trump has the qualifications, the track record or the personal character to be Pres- ident of the United States. Most of us could probably think of a number of people who would be better in the White House. But here, as elsewhere in life, we can only make our choices among the alternatives actually available. Those of us who have been dis- gusted by some of the things that Donald Trump has said and done need to face the fact that he is not running against Mother Teresa. His sins have been matched and exceeded by Hillary Clinton and her husband. As for accomplishments, Trump has none in politics, and business accomplishments do not automat- ically transfer into government. Hillary Clinton has been in poli- tics for decades. But does she have even a single serious accomplish- ment to show for it? In the Senate, she accomplished nothing, and as Secretary of State far worse than nothing. Secretary Clinton carried out the foreign policy that destroyed two governments of countries which posed no threat whatever to America or to American inter- ests in the Middle East. Each coun- try is now moving in the direction of one of our two most dangerous enemies, Iran and Russia. Egypt is now planning joint mil- itary exercises with Russian forc- es. Libya has already seen the rise of Islamic terrorists who killed the American ambassador whom the Clinton State Department refused to provide the security he asked for repeatedly. So much for track records. As for personal character, would you want either of them living next door to your family? Donald Trump seems to think that it is OK for the government to seize someone else's home and turn the property over to him, so that he can build something – without having to pay what it would cost him to buy the home. We can't even discuss what he has said about women in a family news- paper. Add an almost childish ego- mania and you have a 70 -year-old adolescent. Hillary Clinton is fundamentally very similar. But, having spent de- cades in the political limelight, she is far more experienced at conceal- ing her ruthless and cunning con- tempt for anything and anybody that gets in the way of her person- al enrichment and power. That in- cludes contempt for the law. Long before her e-mails became an issue, Mrs. Clinton was evad- ing subpoenas for records she had somehow "lost" in the White House when she was first lady. Both she and her husband perfect- ed the tactic of stalling and stall- ing, until enough time had passed that they could say that an issue was now "old news" and that it was time to "move on." The issue before the voters, however, is not which of the two is the worse person. The issue is which is more dangerous to the fu- ture of America. Nor is this just a question of what will happen in the next four years. Whoever becomes President of the United States can appoint Su- preme Court justices able to de- stroy the Constitution by "inter- preting" its protections of freedom out of existence – not just for the next four years, but thereafter. Hillary Clinton is already on re- cord as wanting a Supreme Court that will overturn recent decisions protecting free speech and uphold- ing the right to bear arms. Every- thing in her past shows a contempt for law that makes her a very cred- ible threat to dismantle the Consti- tution, whenever it gets in the way of her agenda. All it takes is a Senate controlled by fellow Democrats to let a Presi- dent Clinton's judicial nominees be confirmed automatically, no mat- ter how little regard for the Consti- tution those nominees have dem- onstrated. Donald Trump shows no such ideological agenda and has no such automatic support from Congres- sional Republicans as to have them Misinformed millennials and civic ignorance Heritage Viewpoint by Edwin J. Feulner "Freedom is never more than one generation away from ex- tinction," President Reagan once said. One can only imagine how he would have reacted to the first "An- nual Report on U.S. Attitudes To- ward Socialism," a recent poll by the Victims of Communism Memo- rial Foundation ( VOCMF). I know some people like to pile on millennials. But when one third of these young Americans say they believe more people were killed under President George W. Bush than under Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, it's hard not to speak up. Some of the problem, ironical- ly, can be blamed on the fact that we won the Cold War. Those who lived through, say, the Cuban Mis- sile Crisis in 1962, and the "Mutu- ally Assured Destruction" era of the '70s and '80s naturally have a deeper antipathy toward commu- nism than those who learn about it from history books. The VOCMF report shows that 80 percent of baby boomers and 91 percent of elderly Americans believe that communism was and still is a problem today. Only 55 percent of millenni- als take that view. Meanwhile, just over a third of mil- lennials (37 percent) had a "very unfavor- able" view of commu- nism, compared to 57 percent of Amer- icans overall. Nearly half (45 percent) of Americans aged 16 to 20 said they'd vote for a social- ist, and 21 percent would vote for a communist. The same gulf appeared when it came to capitalism: 64 percent of Americans over the age of 65 said they viewed it favorably, compared to just 42 percent of millennials. But I don't think it's just a mat- ter of age. Sure, living through a particular era can give you a bet- ter appreciation for how good or bad it was. But part of the prob- lem, I believe, is the history books I just mentioned. Young Ameri- cans either aren't reading them, or they're being given ones that con- tain some seriously skewed information. How else to explain the fact that 42 per- cent of millennials on the VOCMF report were unfamiliar with Mao Zedong? Millions perished in the forced- labor camps this noto- rious communist foist- ed on the Chinese peo- ple for decades. Yet more than one out of every three millennials don't even know who he is. Two other infamous communist leaders — Vladimir Lenin and Che Guevara — are also unfamiliar to a disturbingly large number of mil- lennials (40 percent and 33 per- cent, respectively). No wonder such a small number view communism unfavorably. The less you know about how it works in practice and not theory, the rosi- er it must appear. It's so much easi- Nine days The world turns quickly in this season. Within a space of about two weeks, we've celebrated the saints, cast our votes, and thanked our veterans, and it's already just over a week until Thanksgiving. There's a lot of anticipation in the air, even with the final election re- sults all tallied. You might be wait- ing to see distant family members around the Thanksgiving table, or waiting to see what the president- elect does in his first term, or even waiting to see what everyone got you for Christmas. This season, with all its anticipa- tion and bustle, is a perfect time to slow things down with prayer. And as it happens, people across the world are praying together right now—we're smack in the middle of the annual Christ the King No- vena. Novenas, in case you're not fa- miliar with the term, are basical- ly nine-day, once-a-day prayer sessions that occur at set times throughout the year, following the Catholic liturgical calendar. It's easy to participate—just get a list of the prayers for the current nove- na and pray them once a day dur- ing the nine-day novena period. I'm writing this on Sunday, which was day three of the nove- na to Christ the King. It's placed where it is because it leads up to the feast day of Christ the King, which kicks off the Advent season, but it just so happens to start right after Election Day if you live in the United States. What better time to recall the ultimate kingship of Jesus than right after electing a bunch of schmucks (and the occa- sional lunatic) to bicker with each other and make much ado about nothing on the taxpayer dime? I myself, as a treading-water kind of Catholic, often pray nove- nas by forgetting about them for a couple days, doing three or four days at a time, then repeating un- til I've stumbled through the entire thing. It kind of defeats the pur- pose of having the prayers spread over nine days, but striving and failing is better than nothing in my book. Even with my bad prayer habits, I find novenas to be real- ly encouraging. There's a certain peacefulness in knowing you're praying alongside thousands of the faithful, warts and all, unit- ed in purpose. Plus, I use a free service, PrayMoreNovenas.com, to email me each day's prayers so that I have no excuse not to pray them. The only good excuse is no excuse! Today's (Sunday) prayer was as follows, taken verbatim from the PrayMoreNovenas email: "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spir- it. Amen. "Christ, our Savior and our King, renew in me allegiance to Your Kingship. "I pray for the grace to place You above the powers of this world in all things. "I pray for the grace to obey You before any civic authority. "I pray for the grace to fervently bring about Your Kingdom in my family and community. "O Prince of Peace, may Your reign be complete in my life and in the life of the world. Christ, my King, please answer these peti- tions if they be in accordance with Your Holy Will… [Mention your intentions here] "As I reflect on Your second, glo- rious coming and the judgment of all mankind, I beg You to show me mercy and give me the grace to be- come a great saint. I pray that not only will I spend eternity with You but that You may use me – a sinner – to bring others into Your King- dom for Your glory. "Christ the King, Your Kingdom come! Amen. "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spir- it. Amen." See what I mean? That's maybe a five-minute prayer if you stretch out your vowel sounds and pauses, and yet it's so powerful if you take it to heart. And all sorts of people from all over are praying it togeth- er! You can, too, if you want. Just go to PrayMoreNovenas.com and sign up for the mailing list—they send out all the prayers for dozens of novenas each year. Thanks as always for indulg- ing me in a crazy religious rant. Have a great week, and feel free to contact me by email, aheuring@ sgstartimes.com.