The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/1042910
The Press-Dispatch Wednesday, October 24, 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 According to the Pew Research Center, 66 percent of those sup- porting Democratic candidates and 18 percent of those support- ing Republican candidates say, "If a person is rich, it is because he or she had more advantages in life than most other people." This from a new Pew survey of Democratic and Republican vot- ers, going into the midterm elec- tions. There couldn't be a bolder pic- ture of the deep division between Democrats and Republicans re- garding what America is about. Consider the richest man in America, Jeff Bezos. He's the founder and chairman of Amazon and is worth well over 100 billion dollars, depending on where the stock market ends up on any giv- en day. Did Bezos achieve this phe- nomenal wealth because he had "more advantages in life than most other people"? Bezos was born to a teenage mother and a father who was an alcoholic. The marriage lasted one year. When Bezos was 4 years old, his mother married Mike Bezos, a Cuban immigrant who arrived in the USA when he was 15. Per accounts of the family, Bezos' stepfather was an ambi- Heritage Viewpoint by Edwin J. Feulner Midterms about future of freedom America's tradition of protesting Watch your thoughts My Point of View by Dr. H. K. Fenol, Jr., M.D. Since it's fall break and I'm head- ed south for a few days to have the last taste of warmer weather, my column will be brief. I came across this article and I think it is worth thinking about. Here it goes: "Watch your thoughts, they become words. Watch your words they become actions. Watch your actions, they become habits. Watch your habits they become character. Watch your character, it becomes your destiny." • • • On the lighter side of things, here's some questions that a friend of mine sent. I'm not sure how she came about with these queries. And here they are : 1. Why do we press harder on a remote control when we know the batteries are getting dead? 2. Why do banks charge a fee on insufficient funds? 3. Did you ever notice when you blow into a dog's ears, he gets mad at you, but when you take him for a car ride, he sticks his head out the window? 4. What disease did cured ham actually have? 5. Why is it that people say they slept like a baby when babies wake up every two hours? 6. Why does someone believe you when you say there are four billion stars, but check when you say the paint is wet. 7. Why did Kamikaze pilots wear helmets? 8. If people evolved from apes, why are there still apes? 9. Why is it that no plastic bag will open from the right end on your first try? 10. Why is it that whenever you attempt to catch something that is falling off the table you always man- age to knock something else over? 11. Do the alphabet song and Twinkle twinkle little star have the same tune? And why did you just try singing these songs? Have a great fall break! It goes real fast. A recent "Let It Out" post in the Indianapolis Star points to a re- occurring problem among Chris- tians. A contributor wrote, "Where are all the 'What Would Jesus Do' folks when we need them. How can any conservative Christian turn their heads and look the oth- er way for this administration? What exactly is this person sug- gesting? What is "this administra- tion" doing that affronts Christian- ity? How was this conclusion ar- rived at and why? I suggest before this question can be answered that we need to determine if Jesus is/was a conser- vative, a liberal, an anarchist, a lib- ertarian, or apolitical?. Jesus by the politically/socially active group is described in their likeness, and they know exactly what Jesus would do. He would flog the pol- iticians and oppress the politically con- nected, reeducate the weak, institute a min- imum standard of liv- ing, create affordable or free housing, confis- cate the riches of the wealthy, make abor- tion and healthcare a universal right, grant full inclu- sion of the LGBT movement, white males would become extinct, hu- manity would become genderless; in other words, the world would be- come a paradise. On the other side, Jesus would end the LGBT movement, close the borders, impris- on the abortionists and their enablers, all would work and there would be no welfare, flag kneelers would be arrested, and gen- der would not be an option; in other words, the world would be- come a paradise. Honestly, to claim to speak for Him politically is actu- ally a disservice or disingenuous. In the Old Testament Law, the Third Commandment "You shall not take the name of the LORD Points to Ponder by Rev. Ford Bond Jesus as a politician Continued on page 8 Continued on page 8 Continued on page 8 Minority View by Walter E. Williams The Electoral College debate Continued on page 8 Democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, seeking to represent New York's 14th Congressional Dis- trict, has called for the abolition of the Electoral College. Her argument came on the heels of the Senate's con- firming Brett Kavanaugh to the Su- preme Court. She was lamenting the fact that Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, nominated by George W. Bush, and Justices Neil Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, nominat- ed by Donald Trump, were court ap- pointments made by presidents who lost the popular vote but won the Elec- toral College vote. Hillary Clinton has long been a critic of the Electoral College. Just recently, she wrote in The Atlantic, "You won't be surprised to hear that I passionately believe it's time to abol- ish the Electoral College." Subjecting presidential elections to the popular vote sounds eminent- ly fair to Americans who have been miseducated by public schools and universities. Worse yet, the call to eliminate the Electoral College re- flects an underlying contempt for our Constitution and its protections for personal liberty. Regarding mise- ducation, the founder of the Russian Communist Party, Vladimir Lenin, said, "Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted." His immediate successor, Josef Stalin, added, "Ed- ucation is a weapon whose effect de- pends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed." A large part of Americans' mised- ucation is the often heard claim that we are a democracy. The word "de- mocracy" appears nowhere in the two most fundamental documents of our nation — the Declaration of Inde- pendence and the U.S. Constitution. In fact, our Constitution — in Article 4, Section 4 — guarantees "to every State in this Union a Re - publican Form of Gov- ernment." The Found- ing Fathers had utter contempt for democra- cy. James Madison, in Federalist Paper No. 10, said that in a pure de- mocracy, "there is noth- ing to check the inducements to sac- rifice the weaker party or an obnox- ious individual." At the 1787 Consti- tutional Convention, Virginia Gov. Edmund Randolph said that "in trac- ing these evils to their origin, every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy." John Ad- ams wrote: "Remember Democra- cy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a Democracy Yet, that did not commit suicide." At the Constitu- tional Convention, Alexander Hamil- ton said: "We are now forming a re- publican government. Real liberty" is found not in "the extremes of democ- racy but in moderate governments. ... If we incline too much to democracy, we shall soon shoot into a monarchy." For those too dense to understand these arguments, ask yourselves: Does the Pledge of Allegiance say "to the democracy for which it stands" or "to the republic for which it stands"? Did Julia Ward Howe make a mistake in titling her Civil War song "Battle Hymn of the Republic"? Should she have titled it "Battle Hymn of the De- mocracy"? The Founders saw our nation as being composed of sovereign states that voluntarily sought to join a union under the condition that each state admit- ted would be coequal with every other state. The Electoral College method of choosing the president and vice president guarantees that each state, wheth- er large or small in ar- ea or population, has some voice in select- ing the nation's leaders. Were we to choose the president and vice pres- ident under a popular vote, the out- come of presidential races would al- ways be decided by a few highly pop- ulated states. They would be states such as California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois and Pennsylvania, which contain 134.3 million people, or 41 percent of our population. Presi- dential candidates could safely ignore the interests of the citizens of Wyo- ming, Alaska, Vermont, North Dako- ta, South Dakota, Montana and Dela- ware. Why? They have only 5.58 mil- lion Americans, or 1.7 percent of the U.S. population. We would no longer be a government! "of the people"; instead, our gov- ernment would be put in power by and accountable to the leaders and citi- zens of a few highly populated states. Political satirist H.L. Mencken said, "The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic." Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason Uni- versity. Pursuit of the Cure by Star Parker Of all the voices being raised against the specter of mob rule in this country, few carry more weight than that of Steve Scalise. That's because Mr. Scalise, a Republican congressman from Louisiana, knows first-hand what happens when violent words turn into violent action. In June 2017, he was shot and se- riously wounded by a man named James Hodgkinson, who turned up at a practice session for a char- ity baseball game in Washington, D.C. — and started shooting as players praticed in Alexandria, Virginia, Mr. Scalise wound up in intensive care, underwent multiple surgeries and even had to relearn how to walk. And all because Mr. Hodgkin- son, a Bernie Sanders supporter described by his own lawyer as "a very irascible, angry little man," was so furious over the election of President Trump that he moved to the D.C. area to protest. Well, I think we can all agree that there's a huge gap between the all-American tradition of pro- testing and the criminal activity of trying to maim or murder those you disagree with. At least I hope we can agree on that. A fter all, when you have Er- ic Holder, President Obama's attor- ney general, caught on tape telling his political teammates, "When they go low, we kick them," you have to wonder. Especially when Mr. Holder's advice follows viral videos of Brett Kavanaugh protesters ambushing lawmakers in hallways and eleva- tors and being verbally abusive, not to mention accosting others in restaurants and even at their homes. You'd think that the Scalise shooting would have made every- one wary of ratcheting up the rhet- oric too much. And sure, some did speak up against it — at least a lit- tle bit. Mr. Sanders said he was "sickened by this despicable act," and Michelle Obama has famous- ly said, "When they go low, we go high." Even Mr. Holder felt pres- sured to walk back his advice as something not meant to be taken literally. But these calls for civility have been far too few in number. And as the fight over Justice Kavana- ugh proved, they obviously haven't made much of an impression. Indeed, many on the left have made a point in recent weeks of denouncing calls for civility. In angry posts on Facebook, Twit - ter and elsewhere, they insist that this is nothing more than an at- tempt to muzzle them. Faced with a president who is alleged such a monster, they claim they have no choice — that they must resort to profane rhetoric and physical con- frontation. That those who support the president will have "no peace." As Rep. Maxine Waters, Califor- nia Democrat, put it: "If you see anybody from [the Trump admin- istration] in a restaurant, in a de- partment store, at a gasoline sta- tion, you get out and you create a crowd! Tell them they're not wel- come anymore, anywhere! " Well, there's another name for angry crowds: Mobs. The left doesn't like the "m word," but that doesn't change the fact that it's accurate. And when you keep de- monizing your opponents, no mat- ter how justified you may think it is, don't be surprised when — hav- ing let the genie out of the bottle — things get ugly. Just ask Steve Scalise. "I'm con- cerned that you are seeing an in- crease of this," he said recently. "I'd like to see the mainstream media asking both Republican and Democratic leaders to stand up against this kind of rhetoric, this kind of violence." That, he adds, is why "we've got to keep shining a light on this, to make it clear that this isn't what politics is about in America. It's not what the founding of our country was about. It was about freedom of speech, freedom of expression. Not violence against anybody." Contrast that with Hillary Clin- ton, who recently said, "You can- not be civil with a political party Policy and personal virtue on Election Day Lucid Moments by Bart Stinson Our president says a lot of things that aren't true. Some of his mis- representations are unintention- al, because this is his first govern- ment job, and he just hasn't given some of the issues much thought. But some are intentional and self- serving. Sometimes he's obviously more interested in a snappy come- back to detractors than in self-crit- icism and painful disclosures. His moral resume isn't the greatest although, at age 72, his sexual scandals are probably well behind him. (Only Joe Biden was still creeping young women out at that age.) But leftist churchmen and their atheist comrades consid- er stubborn Evangelical support for Trump the real scandal. A fter all, the libertine arc of Trump's sexual conduct bears some re- semblance to Bill Clin- ton's, minus the Dem- ocrat's outright sexu- al assaults. Are we hyp- ocritical to support a president who boasted in the Billy Bush tapes 13 years ago of kissing young women uninvit- ed? (He never said he grabbed their private parts. Go back and listen carefully.) Well, some of us are hypocrites, but most of us aren't. Some writers on the Left and the Right have ob- served the similari- ty of our public dis- course to the script- ed story lines of pro- fessional wrestling. In that line of busi- ness, the sympa- thetic characters are called "faces," and the antagonis- tic, contentious bad- guy characters are called "heels." When businessman Donald Trump played a "face" role oppo-