The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/102523
Opinion C-2 Wednesday, January 9, 2013 The Press-Dispatch Observations by Thomas Sowell Happy New Year? The beginning of a new year is often a time to look forward and look back. The way the future looks, I prefer to look back—and depend on my advanced age to spare me from having to deal with too much of the future. If there are any awards to be given to anyone for what they did in 2012, one of those rewards should be for prophecy, if only because prophecies that turn out to be right are so rare. With that in mind, my choice for the prediction of the year award goes to Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal for his column of January 24, 2012 titled: "The GOP Deserves to Lose." Despite reciting a litany of reasons why President Obama deserved to be booted out Unions and 'Democracy' By Ed Feulner "This is what democracy looks like!" That's a popular protest chant among liberals. It could be heard at many "Occupy" gatherings. It's a staple at union-backed protests. We all know that in a democracy, sometimes things go your way, and sometimes they don't. The big question is, how will you react? For example, many conservatives were disappointed in the results recent elections. Despite high unemployment, sluggish economic growth and an unpopular health care program, a majority of voters returned a staunchly liberal president to office. But just as there are no permanent victories, there are no permanent defeats. The only sensible option in a democratic society is to make corrections and keep trying. See, for example, Sen. Marco Rubio and Rep. Paul Ryan at the Dec. 4 Jack Kemp Foundation Leadership Award Dinner. Both men are already finding ways to explain that a society based on opportunity is the best way to lift people out of poverty. The liberal welfare state, meanwhile, is all too often a trap, as New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof recently admitted. Contrast that approach with what some of our friends on the left are up to. In a statewide election in Michigan last month, voters soundly defeated Proposal 2, a measure that would have made union collective bargaining a right and given collective bargaining agreements the force of law. Voters shot down the union-backed measure 57-43 percent. This, too, is what democracy looks like. Recently the Michigan legislature, perhaps inspired by the vote, passed a bill to become the nation's 24th right-to-work state. This simply means that workers will no longer be forced to join a union. They will still be free to do so, if they wish. Gov. Rick Snyder signed the bill because, he says, he wants Michigan to remain competitive. When nearby Indiana became a right-towork state earlier this year, businesses scrambled in to create jobs. "They've had 90 companies in the pipeline for economic development say this was a factor in deciding to look to come to Indiana," Snyder said of that state's right-towork law at a news conference earlier this year, citing statistics from the Indiana Economic Development Corporation. "That's thousands of jobs. We need more and better jobs in Michigan." Union leaders realized they couldn't overcome Continued on page 3 The no-spin zone—by Bill O'Reilly Happy Holidays, Saudi Arabia With Christmas now in the rearview mirror, it is perplexing that some far-left bloggers are still bemoaning the fact that Newsweek magazine proclaimed that folks who respect the traditions of the Christmas holiday "won" the battle against secular progressives who want to diminish the birth of Jesus in the public square. Because of that ongoing angst, and because I am still in the Christmas spirit, I offer some travel tips to the anti-Christmas crew in preparation for this December. If you don't like Christmas, book your trip now. North Korea: According to reporting by ForeignPolicy.com, that feisty little country does not permit the celebration of Christmas, and anyone caught worshiping Jesus can be tortured or executed. Sounds like Rhode Island. Right now, there are about 70,000 Christians in North Korean labor camps decking the halls with rocks and concrete 10 hours a day. The North Korean leader, Kim Jongun, even threatened "unexpected consequences" if the South Korean gov- ernment allowed lights on trees within view of the border. Kim calls that a provocation and a mean form of "psychological warfare." Saudi Arabia: All non-Muslim religious activities are banned in public, so unless Santa puts a prayer rug in his sleigh and heads directly for Mecca, he is persona non grata in this nation. The Saudis even have a religious police force that runs around checking to see who has been naughty and nice in the Islamic context. According to ForeignPolicy, several dozen Christmas trees imported from Holland were seized by Saudi authorities, hacked to pieces and sent back to the Netherlands. So there. No Christmas for you! Cuba: Fidel Castro banned the holiday in 1969 saying Cubans were needed to harvest sugar cane on December 25, and don't even think about Christmas dinner. That ban lasted three decades until the Pope told Comrade Fidel to knock it off. Most Cubans are Catholic and didn't really appreciate the government calling Santa a symbol of "consumerism" and "mental colonization." When asked what exactly the "colonization" deal meant, Santa replied: "Ho, ho, ho." Today the Communist government does not decorate buildings (there is little private property in Cuba) but does allow Cubans to put up Christmas stuff inside. However, the Cuban air force is likely to fire on any reindeer intruding on the country's air space. Cuba, Saudi Arabia and North Korea give American secular progressives three good options by which to avoid Christmas in 2013. Also, there are no public displays of yuletide in Antarctica because there are no buildings. The country of Mali does not have much Christmas stuff going on, but watch out for al-Qaida. Finally, Bikini Island in the Pacific remains largely uninhabited, so there's not much about Jesus on display. Finally, I hope there is calm this year, especially in December. As Yoko Ono is fond of saying, let's give peace a chance (and, by extension, drop the whining about Christmas). If you can't do that, Fidel and Kim will be happy to see you. Veteran TV news anchor Bill O'Reilly is host of the Fox News show "The O'Reilly Factor" and author of the book "Pinheads and Patriots: Where You Stand in the Age of Obama." Points to ponder—by Ford Bond Whatever Happened to Sin? Sin is an interesting concept because without a God, there is no such thing as sin, otherwise human behavior and actions become defined by an individual moral code. Thus, there is no pronounced right or wrong, good or evil, or unchanging morality to guide everyday life. The uniqueness of Christianity cannot be overstated among the religions of the world. Among its teachings are the universality of God, the brotherhood of humanity, and that all mankind has sinned and is in need of salvation. We in the Christianized West at least have a notion what defines sin; this is not so in the non-Christian world. The very concept of sin, to trespass against God, is a difficult idea to relate to other cultures and religions. For example, the ancient Greeks had no perception of trespassing against God, so Paul used the concept of missing the mark, which is translated into English to mean sin. Sin as a definition means that there is a God; He created all things and demands from his creation adherence to a set of ageless values. To deviate from what is A woman's perspective—by Mona Charen Return of the Credibility Gap Lyndon Johnson, step aside. Barack Obama is far more deserving than you ever were of the term "credibility gap." The latest Benghazi lie to crumble like a cigar ash was the assurance from White House spokesman Jay Carney that four State department employees had been fired for their mishandling of the situation following an internal report that found security to have been "grossly inadequate." On Dec. 20, Carney told reporters "Accountability has been brought to bear with regard to four individuals, who are very senior." Major news organizations reported that Eric Boswell, assistant secretary of state in charge of security, had resigned along with three others. Less than a week later, the New York Post revealed that Boswell wasn't actually leaving at all. He had resigned his post as assistant secretary, a spokesman explained, but would continue his other duties at state. As for the other three, they were found to have "performance inadequacies" but not "willful misconduct" and would therefore face no discipline. So, one official changed desks, and the rest remained in place. That's accountability Obama-style. The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and other major news outlets have not bothered to report this. The secretary of state, who on Oct. 15 made the utterly vaporous and content-free claim of "responsibility" for the Benghazi debacle (but chose not to speak for her department on Sept. 16 when the president needed someone to do the rounds of the Sunday talk shows), of the White House, Stephens said, "Let's just say right now what voters will be saying in November, once Barack Obama has been reelected: Republicans deserve to lose." To me, the Republican establishment is the 8th wonder of the world. How they can keep repeating the same mistakes for decades on end is beyond my ability to explain. Bret Stephens said, back at the beginning of 2012, that Mitt Romney was one of the "hollow men," and that voters "usually prefer the man who stands for something." Yet this is not just about Mitt Romney. Continued on page 3 was at last scheduled to testify before Congress on Dec. 20. Her health problems have sidelined her for now. Whether she will testify in January remains an open question. Republican senators have vowed not to confirm John Kerry until she testifies. But if her health remains fragile, Republicans will be portrayed as brutal for insisting. Bed-side testimony anyone? Meanwhile, President Obama's great billowing smoke machine chugs on. Appearing on "Meet the Press" on Dec. 30, the president again expressed anger that questions had been asked of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice. Characterizing reasonable inquiries about the deaths of Americans as "politically motivated attacks," the president insinuated a racial animus. "Why she was targeted individually for this kind of attack was puzzling to me." She, of all members of his administration, he stressed "had the least to do with Benghazi." If that is so, why was she the designated spokesman for the administration? Isn't it just possible that she became a lightning rod because the president made her one? If, as Henry Wotton put it, an ambassador is a man "who is sent abroad to lie for his country," an Obama administration diplomat is a person who is sent to the Sunday shows to lie to his own country. Nearly everything Ambassador Rice said during that Sunday farrago has been shown to be false. We know that there was no protest—and that the administration knew this, too. Rice has since admitted that she saw classified documents linking the attacks to AlQaeda before doing the shows. Secretary Clinton should be under a cloud for failing to prevent the deaths of these Americans and for misleading the nation afterwards. Instead, she is lofted skyward with talk of 2016. A just-released Senate report slams the State Department for ignoring "flashing red" reports of increasing Al-Qaida activity in that part of Libya. Oh well, she failed at a key aspect of her job— nothing to see here. The most opprobrium, though, belongs to the president. As the new Senate report makes absolutely clear, the White House knew within hours of the Benghazi attack that it was a terror attack and not a protest that became violent. "There was never any doubt among key officials . . . that the attack in Benghazi was an act of terrorism. For example, two emails from the State Department Diplomatic Security Operations Center on the day of the attack, Sept. 11, and the day after, Sept. 12, 2012, characterized the attack as an initial terrorism incident and as a terrorist event." Yet, when the president appeared on "60 Minutes," he said it was "too early" to know whether it was a terror attack. On Sept. 18, he said "extremists and terrorists used this (the video) as an excuse to attack a variety of our embassies, including the consulate in Libya." The president persisted in this lie personally and through his surrogates for weeks, even as the contrary evidence became a tsunami. The lies were Nixonian in audacity, Johnsonian in scope. The president is right about one thing—it isn't Susan Rice who should take the fall. required is called sin, and there are consequences. The Apostle Paul makes the argument that without the knowledge of the Law (of Moses), there was no condemnation for sin; because there was no definition for what sin was. But since the advent of Jesus, God now demands that all men (humanity) repent of their sins (Acts 17:30). I make this long prologue in order to ask the question "Whatever happened to sin?" To say that something is a sin requires (as mentioned earlier) one to acknowledge that there is a God, and it is He who sets the standard for behavior. To the secularist, the answer is simply that there is no such thing as sin, but the very concept of sin helped to repress impulsiveness and sustain the rich culture of the Western World, including literature, music, playwriting, and the visual arts. The basis of international law and the right of the individual are based upon natural law that transcends the changing desires and fickleness of humanity. Basic human rights can be summarized in what once was referred to as the Golden Rule: "Do Unto Others as You Would Have Others Do unto You." Sin has been replaced with words such as mistake, bad decision, error, blunder, miscalculation, or an entire thesaurus of similar words that removes or dismisses the penalty and consequence of any behavior. As Christianity teaches, sin not distances a person away from God, it injures others and has a longterm and detrimental impact upon the perpetrator; therefore, mankind must restrain his nature to sin and be able to recognize temptation and resist it. We live in a secular society that has stepped into the abyss of darkness and embraces all types of aberrant behaviors, lusts, and desires. Much of what is esteemed as entertainment is no more than filth and degradation because it centers upon the ethnos of "Do what thou wilt." Take a step back and look at what we allow our children to be taught by the media; greed is good; sex is whatever; the body is to be worshipped and mutilated; cohabitation and fornicaContinued on page 3 The P Dispatch ress- MR. AND MRS. FRANK HEURING, PUBLISHERS ANDREW G. HEURING, EDITOR JOHN B. 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