The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/1025312
The Press-Dispatch Wednesday, September 12, 2018 B-7 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 The passing of Senator John McCain was marked by a sea of eulogies mourning the end of an era of civility and compromise. What has happened, they ask, to those noble, bipartisan days of yesteryear, and how have we de- scended into today's crude and primitive tribalism? I read this stuff and wonder where I was during those wonder- fully tranquil, civil days gone by. Maybe because I am black, I see American history through a differ- ent lens. The truth as I read it in our history, and as I have experi- enced it in my life, is that Ameri- ca has always been a battlefield of ideas and interests. What is unique about our great country is not the absence of con- flict but rather that it occurs open- ly and honestly — and that we sur- vive it, time and again, with our na- tional institutions intact. So it is not confrontation that bothers me. It is dishonesty. And I see a lot of the latter in what I have been reading regarding the alleged era of civility that has come to a close with the passing of Senator McCain. One of the hymns played at Mc- Cain's memorial services at the National Cathedral was "The Bat- tle Hymn of the Republic." It was reported to be one of McCain's fa- vorites. "The Battle Hymn of the Re- public" was, of course, a hymn, a march, of the Civil War, during which some 750,000 Americans lost their lives. It was a war no one wanted. In Abraham Lincoln's words, "Both parties deprecated war, but one of Since the inception of the church, it has had to deal with in- ternal heresies, dissentions, un- belief, egotism, and sin; each has been a cancer on the church and has caused much division and harm. The Protestant Reformation in the 16th century was push backed due to corruption within the Church. The Church [by then known as the Catholic Church] at the Council of Trent [circa AD 1545] acknowledged it could not continue as a corporate body un- less it addressed the abused within the hierarchy of the church. This brought order and spiritu- al stability to the Catholic Church well into the 20th century. Now we are almost through the second de- cade of the 21st century, and the Catholic Church has been rocked to its core by sex scandals world- wide, and the church hierarchy is accused of a cover-up. Protestants have had their share of scandals, but what makes the Catholic Church sex scandal a de- bacle is that the church is world- wide and claims 1 billion mem- bers. No Protestant church de- nomination has this much clout and following. Make no mistake; the ongoing scandal involves ephe- bophilia, which can- not be justified. No reputable sexologists can argue consensu- al sexual activity be- tween adults and chil- dren is healthy, ever! When Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò publically accused se- nior Catholic hierar- chy of knowingly covering up and enabling the abuse [in Pennsylva- nia], the scandal reached critical mass. Conservative Catholic and col- umnist Patrick Buchannan in a recent post wrote that this scan- dal was a "Cancer on the Papacy," and "Priests who prey on parochial school children and altar boys are not only sinners, they are criminal predators who belong in peniten- tiary cells not parish rectories…." In a similar vein, a recent arti- cle by Mark Wauck "Will the Me- dia Turn against Pope Fancis" gave his summation where this crisis is headed. Wauck points out that the pope has a large following in the media who champion his relaxation on sexual issues [Francis remarked when asked about homosexuality "Who am I to judge?], and this can only lead to more relaxation of sexuality as defined by the church. The Catholic Church is a global so- cial and religious in- stitution. Its influence among the congregants is waning, at least among the faithful in the Western World. For example, the ongoing don- nybrook at Roncoli High School in Indianapolis concerning a woman counsellor marrying an- other woman is an example of the teachings of the Catholic Church being ignored by the faithful; and in Ireland, a heavily Catholic na- tion, has voted to allow abortion, which is against the teachings of the church. So why should we be surprised when we hear there could be ram- pant sexual abuse among the cler- gy? Heritage Viewpoint by Edwin J. Feulner The flawed retrospectives on McCain Giving Judge Kavanaugh a fair hearing Points to Ponder by Rev. Ford Bond The church in crisis Peace of mind My Point of View by Dr. H. K. Fenol, Jr., M.D. From time to time, I go over items I have collected through the years, which I feel are worth keeping in my stack of ever grow- ing files. Some are in paper form, some on electronic files, some stored in my cerebrum. It seems to me that it is easi- er to retrieve paper files but they eat so much space in my already overflowing filing system. The electronic files are real handy and quick to retrieve but there is al- ways the fear that they can dis- appear with the wrong push of a button or key on a computer. And sometimes no matter how hard I try, I forget under what title I la- beled the item. Then there is a program called NEAT filing system that I bought years ago which I have tried many times to use and tweak but I find the software program gets cantan- kerous and puts items under the wrong headings. One time I stored an article for our church and it just kept filing it under VISA, and with some pages missing. Perhaps I'm not doing things right, but I al- so noticed the advertisement for this product seems to have disap- peared from the airwaves. Am I the only one suffering this dilemma? I really need to study this program much more for as long as my patience does not run out. • • • Here's one of my favorites. It is an article authored by Rev. Eamon Tobin who pastors a Church in Or- lando Florida. His topic is "Where do we find Peace? " Continued on page 8 Continued on page 8 Continued on page 8 The Weekly by Alden Heuring Looking at the lake Minority View by Walter E. Williams South Africa question Continued on page 8 Continued on page 8 South A frica has been thrown into the news because of President Donald Trump's recent tweet that he instructed his secretary of state to "closely study" alleged land sei- zures from white farmers in South A frica. Earlier this year, a land con- fiscation motion was brought by radical Marxist opposition lead- er Julius Malema, and it passed South A frica's Parliament by a 241-83 vote. Malema has had a long-standing commitment to land confiscation without com- pensation. In 2016, he told his supporters he was "not calling for the slaughter of white people — at least for now" (https://tinyurl. com/y7mfmhco). The land-grab- bing sentiment is also expressed by Lindsay Maasdorp, national spokesman for Black First Land First, a group that condones land seizures in South A frica. He says, "We are going to take back the land, and we'll do it by any means necessary." The land confiscation policy was a key factor in the plat- form of the new president, Cyril Ramaphosa. I have visited South A frica sev- eral times, in 1979, 1980 and 1992. My three-month 1980 visit includ- ed lectures at nearly all South A f- rican universities. The 1992 re- turn visit, two years after apart- heid ended and two years before democratic elections, included lec- tures on my book "South A frica's War Against Capital- ism." During each vis- it, my counsel to South A fricans, particularly black South A fricans, was that the major task before them was not only ridding the nation of apartheid but deciding what was go- ing to replace it. That's an important question. William Hutt, the late University of Cape Town econo- mist who was an anti-apartheid voice within the academic com- munity, wrote in his 1964 book, ti- tled "The Economics of the Colour Bar," that one of the supreme trage- dies of the human condition is that those who have been the victims of injustices or oppression "can often be observed to be inflicting not dissimilar injustices upon oth- er races." In 2001, Andrew Kenny wrote an article titled "Black Peo- ple Aren't Animals — But That's How Liberals Treat Them." Ken- ny asked whether South A frica is doomed to follow the rest of A fri- ca into oblivion. Kenny gave a "no" answer to his question, but he was not very optimistic because of the pattern seen elsewhere in sub-Sa- haran A frica. He argued that ordi- nary A fricans were better off un- der colonialism. Colonial masters never committed anything near the murder and geno- cide seen under black rule in Rwanda, Bu- rundi, Uganda, Nige- ria, Mozambique, So- malia and othe! r countries, where millions of blacks have been slaughtered in unspeakable ways, in- cluding being hacked to death, boiled in oil, set on fire and dismembered. Ken- ny said that if as many elephants, zebras and lions were as ruthless- ly slaughtered, the world's left- ists would be in a tizzy (https:// tinyurl.com/ybj4u9fj). Ghanaian economist George Ayittey expressed a similar com- plaint in his book "A frica Be- trayed": "White rulers in South A frica could be condemned, but not black A frican leaders guilty of the same political crimes." Moe- letsi Mbeki, a brother of former South A frican President Thabo Mbeki's and deputy chairman of the South A frican Institute of In- ternational A ffairs, an indepen- dent think tank based at the Uni- versity of the Witwatersrand, said in 2004 that A frica was in a spiral of decline. "The average A frican is poorer than during the age of colo- Pursuit of the Cure by Star Parker In a world where distractions and obligations often pile up on our backs faster than we can count them, it's easy to get caught up in the flow. Some people even cram their vacations with nonstop plans and activities, turning their "get- away" from the rat race into more of the same hustle and bustle with- out really meaning to. I was given an opportunity to take a different path this week- end on a vacation with family. We took a short drive to the Land Be- tween the Lakes, where I planned on doing only two things: playing a round of golf and looking at the lake. And I was able to cross both off my to-do list. The golf goes without saying, but a chair overlooking the lake was where I gladly spent at last half the weekend. In the morning, a turtle swam just under the water's surface, with his head and the pat- tern on his shell show- ing through the ripples. He crawled up on a log, rested for a while, then plopped back into the water and disappeared. At midday, the boats and birds came out, both vying for some of the fish that popped out from under the wa- ter with a splash every now and then. A loon near my deck poked her head in, came up with a wriggling fish, and swallowed her lunch whole. Around suppertime, the rain blew in and lasted the rest of the weekend. The winds mercifully blew crosswise from me, so that I could sit outside watching the rain without more than a couple stray drops hitting my lap. One of the highlights of the trip was seeing the way the big rain- drops splashed into the waves on the lake. (Another highlight was my toddler escap- ing from her shower time and running out on the porch buck na- ked and squawking, "Look, it's raining! ") We left the lake not having do- ne much of anything, which was exactly what we'd hoped to ac- complish. I'd recommend a week- end of peace and quiet to anyone. You don't have to make plans, you don't have to answer your phone. Just breathe, and be, and let the world roll on. I hate to have to ask such a ba- sic question, but does Sen. Chuck Schumer, New York Democrat, understand the role of a U.S. Su- preme Court justice? Considering what the Senate mi- nority leader had to say before the hearings for Brett Kavanaugh got underway, you have to wonder. Even before the nominee was announced, Mr. Schumer was saying that "U.S. senators and the American people should expect an affirmative statement of support" on certain issues. Funny, though. He sounded a different tune in 2010, when NBC's Dick Gregory asked him about the upcoming hearings for Justice Ele- na Kagan. Such hearings, Mr. Schumer said, "should talk about judicial ideology and philosophy. Obvi- ously, you can't try to pin someone down on what might be an upcom- ing case, but knowing how they think, how they reason, what's their view of settled law — these are all very legitimate questions, and the hearings would be much less if they weren't asked." Now, I doubt that Mr. Schum- er and other liberals will bluntly ask how Judge Kavanaugh would rule on upcoming cases. But I'm sure their artfully worded ques- tions will be designed to try and find out exactly that. And when Judge Kavanaugh ex- plains that he can't say in advance how he will come down on contro- versial issues, he will surely be accused of stonewalling. Of being evasive. Yet when Justice Kagan and Justice Sonia Sotomayor gave very careful answers during their hearings, explaining that they could not signal how they'd rule on particular hot-button subjects, Mr. Schumer and his fellow liber- als didn't press them. Indeed, in Justice Sotomayor's case, they sought to forestall such questions. "I would hope that ev- erybody will keep their questions pertaining to you and your back- ground as a judge," Sen. Patrick Leahy, Vermont Democrat, said at the outset of her hearings. Will there be a similar plea for those questioning Brett Kavana- ugh? Don't hold your breath. And yet many past Supreme Court justices — including Felix Frankfurter, John Marshall Har- lan and Thurgood Marshall — wisely declined to indicate how they'd rule on a certain case or is- sue. According to a more recent jus- tice, a judge who is "sworn to de- cide impartially can offer no fore- casts, no hints, for that would show not only disregard for the specif- ics of the particular case, it would display disdain for the entire judi- cial process." That's right. Not just no di- rect answers, but "no hints." The speaker: Justice Ruth Bader Gins- burg. Yet we know that won't stop liberal senators from trying to coax a lot more than hints from Judge Kavanaugh. What they don't seem to under- stand (or pretend not to when it's politically expedient) is that a jus- tice is like a baseball umpire. His or her own personal likes or dis- likes can't be permitted to influ- ence a ruling. A justice is there to rule on whether or not a particular law or action is constitutional, regardless of bias. By the same token, an um- pire has to call a runner out if he's tagged before he touches home plate, even if his call goes against the team he likes. It all boils down to whether or not we have a proper understand- ing of how the judiciary functions in our system of government. Those seeking to rig the game, so to speak, to assure a certain out- come clearly don't get it. Or they do, and they don't care. A fter all, for many politicians, the name of the game is political pow- er, even if you have to bend a few rules to the breaking point. Senators determined to press Judge Kavanaugh on how he'll rule on future cases should consid- er Justice Sotomayor's stated posi-