The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/1005686
The Press-Dispatch Wednesday, July 18, 2018 C-11 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 All Christian denominations are having serious issues trying to re- spond to the numerous social con- cerns that are fermenting within our nation. The question arises how to meet the challenges of our social culture when we do not agree up- on the "core values" needed to even have a conversation. In oth- er words, "how can you discuss an issue if the conversation is not guided by the 'core values' of the local church? " "Core values" are intrinsic feel- ings that guide behavior and can help define right and wrong. Core values in businesses guide their purpose, and the typical list will include integrity, accountabil- ity, diligence, perseverance and discipline. The question may arise as to why identifying core values are im- portant for the church; do we not already know what they are? The answer is Yes and No. Most Christians know the mis- sion of the church: "Go into the world and make disciples" [Mat- thew 28:19]. Furthermore, the church em- braces the core doctrines as set out in the Book of Hebrews: "….let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith to- ward God, of the doc- trine of baptisms, of laying on of hands, of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment" [Hebrews 6:1-2]. However, each per- son interjects what he/she considers nonnegotiable values or interpretations of scripture, which may make dis- cussing an issue difficult because each person is using a different ref- erence point or definition of the same word. For example, the church across time broke sins into venal and moral, as listed as the works of the flesh found in the apostle Paul letter to the church at Galatia: … "adultery, fornication, unclean- ness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambi- tions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, and rev- elries." What challenges each of us when we discuss issues, whether they be social, political, or church is, are we discussing the issue from the same reference point? It is obvious that embracing a set of core values act as a guide when we dis- cuss issues that so of- ten divide us. Method- ists are urged to have conversations about is- sues X, Y, and Z. But as mentioned, we come to the table with precon- ceived ideas and differ- ent values or different meaning of the same words or phrase. As a church, we must be con- scious of the admonition from the book of Amos: "Can two walk to- gether unless they are agreed? " The church has been wracked with schisms since the time of the apostles. The apostle Paul ad- dresses this in his letter to the church at Ephesus and writes: "… till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the full- ness of Christ; that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine.…" Therefore, the question re- mains: What core values should Lucid Moments By Bart Stinson Farewell to the patriarch of Pike County journalism Points to Ponder by Rev. Ford Bond Core values Let's have some lighter moments My Point of View by Dr. H. K. Fenol, Jr., M.D. A friend of mine sent these Church signs. Enjoy! 1. Catch up with Jesus. Lettuce pause and relish Him. Cuz he loves me from my head to-ma-toes. 2. Adam and Eve—the first people who did not read the apple terms and conditions. 3. Too hot to keep changing signs. Sin bad. Jesus good. De- tails inside. 4. During the winter months: "If you are praying for snow, please stop." 5. During hot summer months: "Whoever stole our AC units, please keep them. It is hot where you are going." 6. Honk if you love Jesus. Text while driving if you want to meet Him. 7. Just love everyone. I'll sort 'em out later.—God. 8. Forgive your enemies, it mess- es with their heads. 9. Tweet others as you would like to be tweeted. 10. Jesus is watching, but the po- lice have radar. • • • A minister parked his car in a no parking zone in a large city be- cause he was short of time and could not find a space with a meter. So he put a note under his wind- shield wiper that read : "I have cir- cled the block 10 times, if I don't park here, I'll miss my appoint- ment. Forgive us our trespasses." When he returned, he found a citation from the police officer, along with this note. "I've circled Continued on page 12 Continued on page 12 Continued on page 12 The Weekly by Alden Heuring Grandpa Minority View by Walter E. Williams Shooting ourselves in the foot Continued on page 12 Continued on page 12 Continued on page 12 The Canadian government, lin- ing the pockets of its dairy produc- ers, imposes high tariffs on Amer- ican dairy imports. That forces Ca- nadians to pay higher prices for dairy products. For example, Ca- nadians pay $5.24 for a 10.5 -ounce block of cheddar. In Washington, D.C., that same amount of ched- dar sells for $ 3.64. Canadians pay $ 3.99 for a 1-pound container of yo- gurt. In Washington, D.C., you can get nearly twice as much yogurt for a little over $4. It's clear that the Canadian government's tariffs disadvantage its citizens by forc- ing them to pay higher prices for dairy products. What should the U.S. response be to Canada's hurting its citizens? If you were in the Trump admin- istration, you might propose im- posing tariffs on soft wood prod- ucts that Americans import from Canada — in other words, retal- iate against Canada by pedaliz- ing American citizens. Canadian lumber — such as that from pine, spruce and fir trees — is used in U.S. homebuilding. Guess what tariffs on Canadian lumber do to home prices. If you an- swered that they raise the cost and Ameri- can homebuyers are forced to pay higher prices, go to the head of the class. This retaliation pol- icy is both cruel and not very smart. It's as if you and I were in a rowboat out at sea and I shot a hole in my end of the boat. What should be your response? If you were Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross or Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin, you might advise retaliating by shoot- ing a hole in your end of the boat. If I were president, I'd try to per- suade officials of other countries not to serve special producer in- terests by forcing their citizens to pay higher prices. But if they in- sisted, I'd say, "Go ahead, but I'll be damned if I'll do the same to Americans! " The ruse used to promote pro- ducer interests through tariff pol- icy is concern about our large trade deficit. It's true that we have a large current account trade deficit. Howev- er, that's matched ex- actly by a very large capital account sur- plus. Translated, that means Americans buy more goods from oth- er countries than they buy from us; that's our current ac- count deficit. But other countries find our investment climate attrac- tive and invest more in the U.S. than we invest in other countries; that's our capital account surplus. Have you ever wondered why foreigners are willing to invest far more money in Texas and Cal- ifornia than they are willing to in- vest in Argentina and Venezuela? Do you think it's because they like North Americans better than they like South Americans? No. We've The facts about fact-checkers Heritage Viewpoint by Edwin J. Feulner You don't have to be a student of ancient Roman poetry to have heard Juvenal's famous line "Who watches the watchmen? " But per- haps a more apt question today would be: Who checks the fact- checkers? Fact-checkers aren't a new thing, but they've become a pop- ular feature on many news sites. And let's face it, it's something that can be really useful. The downside of having so much information at our fingertips is that we're drown- ing in it. It's not easy to double- check it all for accuracy, so we gen- erally accept or reject what we see on faith alone. Enter the fact-checker. At last, someone willing to dig a bit and let us know if the unemployment figure some politician used in a speech is even close. Or if the tax statistics in a White House press release are true. And so on. Except that's not how many fact- checkers work. Some do, yes, and when it's a matter of mining some data from a particular report or government agency, it's a pretty straightfor- ward task. But when you look clos- er, you start to notice that many of these features veer sharply into what can be more accurately called opinion-checking. Consider what hap- pened recently with White House advis- er Ivanka Trump and The Washington Post. The president's daughter reacted to the positive employment numbers released on July 6 by saying this: "I think one of the tremendous opportunities that we're seeing be- cause the economy is so strong is that people who have been out of the workforce are coming back off the sidelines. And this is some- thing we are working incredibly hard to incentivize. Because there is a large population of prime-age men and women who are out of the workforce and who are now slowly starting to return. Two million peo- ple have come off food stamps and are starting to reenter the econ- omy, and we think that's incredi- bly positive, and we're very excited about that." True or false? The Post's Meg Kelly de- cided to scrutinize this statement. You may be think- ing, well, that shouldn't be too hard. There's only one fact in her statement that can even be checked: The num- ber of people who have come off food stamps. Ms. Kelly looks it up, and finds that it's "an accurate sta- tistic." So, case closed? Does Ms. Trump get no "Pinocchios" on The Post's scale (with four indicating a completely false statement)? Nope. She gets two out of four "Pinocchios." Why? Because Ms. Kelly spends most of the column talking about the other parts of Ms. Trump's statement, such as whether it re- Frank Heuring Jr. was already a master of his craft in 1962 when I watched him compose a page with little slugs of lead type, one slug for each letter or punctua- tion mark, and a blank slug for each space. I don't remember if it was a page of the Pike County Dispatch or one of the print jobs that he pro- duced on contract. I didn't look very closely, and I wouldn't have known what I was looking at, any- way. I was a just a second-grader. My strongest memory of it is the sound, the fast-paced slapping of the slugs into place. And I was impressed that the text was never written out. There was nothing to translate from long- hand to the printing plate. The page went straight from his brain to the plate. Frank died last week at 87. There are very few human beings on this planet with a more exten- sive paper trail of what passed through their brains. He was one of the last of the Old School print newspapermen, who took charge of his family's weekly newspaper two years before Evansville got a television station. The technology was loud back then. On printing days, it sounded like a factory. Nowadays, it's quiet- er than a laundromat, and it's been outsourced to distant printing con- tractors. There wasn't much that Frank outsourced in his prime. A Ken- tucky farm-raised preacher said at the funeral that his own father was the hardest-working man he ever knew, except maybe for Frank Heuring. My dad remembers riding with Frank in 1958 to deliver papers in rural Pike County. By that time, Frank had been in charge at the Dispatch for six years. He was the third generation of Heurings to publish the newspaper. He was a man of considerable local impor- tance, the author of its editorials and much of the news content. But he wasn't too high and mighty to stuff his car with newspapers and drive out into the rain to deliver a country route—or two or three— when he needed to. Ten years later, Frank and his wife Rachel were there when Bobby Kennedy gave his famous speech urging peace on the streets of Indianapolis after Martin Luther King was assassinated. It's no sur- prise that a third-generation news- paperman would support the First Amendment, but Frank was a stout supporter of the Second Amend- ment, as well. He held a National Rifle Association membership til the day that he died. And when he traveled to Indianapolis in 1968, he disassembled a rifle and carried it in his luggage to the hotel room, just in case. Back home in Pike County, his experiences with firearms were a lot more lighthearted. Dad says Frank made a pretty good dent in the crow population in the Patoka River bottoms. He was an only child, and when his dad died in 1952, Frank was called home from the Army to help his widowed mother keep the fam- ily business afloat. They not only got through that crisis, but grew and prospered. Frank bought some nice toys from time to time. My dad always admired his motorcycle on which, it must be said, Frank rarely daw- dled. He owned guns, and he liked to hunt. Later, he had some boats. When my dad retired and came back stateside, Frank took him out on the boat to show off parts of Pike County that my dad had never seen. There were egrets, Great Blue Herons and wild tur- keys. It was a very nice homecom- ing. They'd been friends since Winslow High School, Class of '49. Both were classmates with my mom. We aren't family, but we're family of family. Or family of fami- ly of family, to be precise. If you're from Pike County, you know that doesn't narrow it down much. While we were out of the coun- try, the Heurings bought the Pe- The woods behind Grandpa's house were grown all up with ma- ples and fragrant pines, but he had cleared a winding path to the river years ago. You could take a group all the way back to the ravine, where the orangey clay turned to pinkish-gray stones and tiny fir saplings were reaching up from the nooks and crannies. But past that point, the path nar- rowed between the trees, and even just a pair carrying a canoe would have to bend down a bit to reach the riverside. Grandpa and I had walked these paths many times, in all seasons. He would pick up a leaf, or a tuft of pine needles, or a wildflower, and say: "Do you know what this is? " No. "It's a buttercup," or, "It's a Douglas fir... Do you know how to tell? " No. "See here now. You see the col- or in the needles? " And so on. By and by I learned the trees, but would forget the flowers when they were out of sea- son. He showed me, too, where the sweetest blackberries grew; what happens when you step on a poof- ball; why you shouldn't eat crabap- ples; and how to put the canoe out on the river and paddle. My father and uncle had been accomplished paddlers not so long before, and Grandpa's basement was lined with their trophies from river races. "Those boys really know how to paddle," he'd tell me. But our trips on the canoe were always slow and easy. We'd put our paddles down into the water just so and pull back, watching the lit- tle eddies and floating plants wig- gle across the flats of the blades; then up, forward, down again, then switch sides. Going downstream was even easier. We lay our paddles across