The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/1073799
C-8 Wednesday, Januar y 23, 2019 The Press-Dispatch 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 Fifty-five years ago this month, Barry Goldwater launched his quixotic campaign to be the Re- publican candidate for president. In the process, he turned Ameri- can politics upside down. He won the nomination, but lost the general election — bad- ly — capturing only six states, 52 electoral votes and 39 percent of the popular vote. It was the larg- est margin of defeat in a presiden- tial race up until that time. And yet Mr. Goldwater affected American politics more than many winning candidates have. "Again and again in American history," the political historian Theodore B. White wrote, "it has happened that the losers of the presidency contributed almost as much as to the permanent tone and dialogue of politics as did the win- ners." Mr. Goldwater was just such a candidate in 1964. Like an Old Testament prophet, he warned people to repent of their spendthrift ways or reap a bitter harvest. Anti-communist to the core, he urged a strategy of vic- tory (not containment) over com- munism by a combination of stra- tegic, economic, and psychological means, including military superiority over the Soviets and the ces- sation of U.S. aid to Communist govern- ments that used the money "to keep their subjects enslaved." More than almost any candidate before or since, Mr. Goldwa- ter placed ideas at the center of his campaign. He talked, for example, about the partial privatization of Social Security and a flat tax. De- nounced as extremist in 1964, to- day such proposals are considered mainstream. Mr. Goldwater laid the founda- tion for a political revolution that culminated in the election of Ron- ald Reagan as president in 1980 and the Republican capture in 1994 of the U.S. House of Repre- sentatives. He inspired more peo- ple, including myself, to enter the world of politics and policy-making than any other losing candidate in modern times. In his 1988 mem- oir, he insisted that he didn't start a revo- lution, that he simply began "to tap a deep reservoir [of conser- vatism] that already existed" in the Amer- ican people. That is like Thomas Paine saying he didn't ignite the American Revolu- tion by writing his fiery pamphlet "Common Sense." On the first page of his land- mark book "The Conscience of a Conservative," Mr. Goldwater de- clared that America was funda- mentally a conservative nation and that American people yearned for a return to conservative principles. He then blamed conservatives for failing to demonstrate "the practi- cal relevance of conservative prin- ciples to the needs of the day." His book, he said, was designed Origins of month names My Point of View by Dr. H. K. Fenol, Jr., M.D. I was flipping through the pages of the Old Farmers Almanac 2019 and read an interesting item about where the names of the months of the year came from. I'm sure these items are accurate so I'd like to share this with the readers. Here it is… January- named from the Roman God Janus, pro- tector of gates and doorways. Ja- nus is depicted with two faces, one looking into the past, the other in- to the future. February-comes from the Lat- in word Februa which means "to cleanse." The month was named for the Roman Februalia which was a month long festival of puri- fication and atonement. March- named for the Roman god of war, Mars. This was the time of the year to resume mili- tary campaigns that had been in- terrupted by winter. April- from the latin word Ape- rio, "to open (bud) because plants begin to grow during this month. May-for the Roman goddess Maia, who oversaw the growth of the plants. Also from the Latin word maiores, "elders," who were celebrated during this month. • • • Now let's go to the next six months . I split this article in two sections to make it easier to read. June- named for the Roman god- dess Juno, patroness of marriage and the well-being of women. Also With the emergence of political activists' espousing Communis- tic/Marxist ideas, it is beneficial to remind ourselves what Commu- nism has accomplished. A fter the communists gained control of Russia, there was an esti- mated 20 million Russians starved, tortured, executed, and murdered. Most of the victims were not ran- dom. At the top of the list for erad- ication was the aristocracy, the middle class, and adherents to Christianity. The bloodletting was ghastly, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's last book Two Hundred Years Togeth- er chronicles some of the atroci- ties of the communists. His book is explosive and to the guilty con- troversial and has yet to be official- ly translated into English. Today, the only major country that remains Communist is China, and it is wrestling with the forces of ethnicity and religion that the communists in Russia faced and are taking a similar approach. The communist Chinese are pursing the traditional Commu- nist's policy of eradi- cating all ethnic and religious challenges to the one-party Com- munists-Chinese cul- ture. Though the gov- ernment has relaxed some pressure upon the Christian Church, it is continuing to mer- cilessly oppress the Uighur Muslims liv- ing in in the western region near Kazakhstan and Pakistan. The Uighurs are a Muslim Tur- kic people who created East Turke- stan after the Chinese Quin Dy- nasty collapsed in 1914; but by the 1930s, they became controlled by the Communist Russians, then were invaded and subjugated by the Communist Chinese in 1949. The Uighurs are resisting dom- ination by the Chinese commu- nists, and Beijing in October, 2018 acknowledged it has enacted leg- islation aimed at the Uighur's liv- ing in the Xinjiang region [East Turkestan], which al- lows for the interment for individuals who are deemed as ex- tremists in "re-edu- cation camps" for the purpose of "thought transformation." The Unrepresented Nations and Peoples' Organization head- quartered in Brussels, report that the camps use torture and indoctrination techniques to undermine the Uighur's religious and cultural identity and are "en- couraged" to swear loyalty to Pres- ident Xi Jinping and criticize or re- nounce Islam. The Chinese government as- serts that many of the Uighurs have been "deceived by religious extremism," which has led to Is- lamist militantism and separatism, thus needing "reeducated." Points to Ponder by Rev. Ford Bond A bad tree Continued on page 9 Continued on page 9 Continued on page 9 Continued on page 9 Minority View by Walter E. Williams Politics of immigration Continued on page 9 Continued on page 9 Here are a couple of easy im- migration questions — answer- able with a simple "yes" or "no" — we might ask any American of any political stripe: Does every- one in the world have a right to live in the U.S.? Do the American people have a right, through their elected representatives, to decide who has the right to immigrate to their country and under what con- ditions? I believe that most Amer- icans, even today's open-borders people, would answer "no" to the first question and "yes" to the sec- ond. There's nothing new about this vision. Americans have held this view throughout our history, dur- ing times when immigration laws were very restrictive and when they were more relaxed. Tucker Carlson, host of Fox News Chan- nel's "Tucker Carlson Tonight," gives us an interesting history les- son about immigration at Prager University (http://tinyurl.com/ ydylykfk). It was prompted by his watching a group of protesters who were denouncing President Donald Trump's immigration pol- icies. They were waving Mexican flags and shouting, "¡Sí, se puede! " ("Yes, we can! ") Unbeknownst to the protesters, the ex- pression "Sí, se pu- ede" was a saying of Cesar Chavez's. When Chavez, the founder of the United Farm Work- ers union, used the expression "Yes, we can," he meant something entire- ly different: "Yes, we can" seal the borders. He hated illegal immigra- tion. Chavez explained, "As long as we have a poor country bordering California, it's going to be very dif- ficult to win strikes." Why? Farm- ers are willing to hire low-wage immigrants here illegally. Chavez had allies in his protest against the hiring of undocumented workers and lax enforcement of immigra- tion laws. Included in one of his protest marches were Democrat- ic Sen. Walter Mondale and a long- time Martin Luther King Jr. aide, the Rev. Ralph Abernathy. Peaceful protest wasn't Chavez's only tool. He sent union members into the desert to assault Mexicans who were trying to sneak in to the country. They beat the Mexicans with chains and whips made of barbed wire. Undocumented immi- grants who worked during strikes had their houses firebombed and their cars burned. By the way, Chavez remains a leftist hero. President Barack Obama declared his birth- day a commemorative federal hol- iday, an official day off in several states. A number of buildings and student centers on college cam- puses and dozens of public schools bear the name Cesar Chavez. Democrats have long taken stances against both legal and il- legal immigration. In 1975, Cali- fornia Gov. Jerry Brown opposed Vietnamese immigration, saying Barry Goldwater, the presidential loser who 'won the future' Heritage Viewpoint by Edwin J. Feulner Pursuit of the Cure by Star Parker Observations By Thomas Sowell Freedom starts with respect for life Fact-free politics Tennessee's new senator, Mar- sha Blackburn, has just introduced the Title X Abortion Provider Pro- hibition Act. This coincides with this year's March for Life, not- ing 46 years since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion. The legislation would end all federal funding to all abortion pro- viders, including Planned Parent- hood. This is the first legislative initia- tive by Blackburn, elected to the Senate in 2018 after serving eight terms in House of Representatives. Blackburn has been a principled, unwavering pro-life conservative in all her years of public service, and I commend her for this. It is about time that as a nation we understand the scourge of abortion in the broadest context of how it impacts our nation's health and wealth. I have spoken and written often about this, comparing our social upheavals of today to those of the 1850s, when slavery was the issue tearing our nation apart. The 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, championed by Senator Stephen Douglas, provided that citizens of these new territories could vote to determine whether slavery would be permitted. The act was, on the issue of slav- ery, pro-choice. Abraham Lincoln touched the heart of the matter in his famous speech, Oct. 16, 1854 in Peoria, Il- linois. "Judge Douglas interrupted me to say," said Lincoln, "that the prin- ciple (of ) the Nebraska Bill was very old; that it originated when God made man and placed good and evil before him, allowing him to choose for himself, being re- In this era when there has been more information available to more people than at any time in the past, it is also true that there has been more misinformation from more different sources than ever. We are not talking about dif- ferences of opinion or inadequate verification, but about statements and catchwords in utter defiance of facts. Among the most popular cur- rent catchwords are "climate change deniers." Stop and think. Have you ever — even once in your entire life — seen, heard or read even one human being who denied that climates change? It is hard even to imagine how any minimally knowledgeable person could deny that climates change, when there are fossils of marine creatures in the Sahara Desert. Obviously there has been quite a climate change there. The next time someone talks about "climate change deniers," ask them to name one — and tell you just where specifically you can find their words, declaring that cli- mates do not change. You can bet the rent money that they cannot tell you. Why all this talk about these mythical creatures called "climate change deniers"? Because there are some meteorologists and oth- er scientists who refuse to join the stampede toward drastic econom- ic changes to prevent what others say will be catastrophic levels of "global warming." There are scientists on both sides of that issue. Presumably the issue could be debated on the basis of evidence and analysis. But this has become a political crusade, and political issues tend to be set- tled by political means, of which demonizing the opposition with catchwords is one. It is much the same story on eco- nomic issues. Any proposal to re- duce income tax rates is sure to bring out claims that these are "tax cuts for the rich," based on the "trickle-down theory" that re- ducing the taxes collected from the rich will cause some of their wealth to "trickle down" to people with lower incomes. Here, yet again, all you need to do is think back over your own life, and ask yourself if you have ever — even once in your entire life — seen, heard or read a single human being who advocated this "trickle- down theory." Certainly none of the innumer- able fellow economists I have en- countered in my 88 years ever ad- vocated any such theory. Nor am I aware of anyone else, in any oth- er walk of life, who has done so. Yet there are ringing denunci- ations of the "trickle-down theo- ry" in books, articles, and in pol- itics and the media. That theory has been denounced as far away as India. The next time someone talks about the "trickle-down" theory, ask them to tell you where specif- ically you can find the writings, videos or any other evidence of someone advocating that theory. You may get some very clever and creative evasions of your question, but no actual answer. One of the best-selling history textbooks did name Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon as having said in the 1920s that let- ting the rich pay less taxes would allow their wealth to "trickle down" to others. It was one of the very rare examples that actually named a name. Unfortunately, what this wide- ly used history textbook attribut- ed to Andrew Mellon was the di- rect opposite of what he actually said. In Mellon's own book, "Tax- ation," he said that wealthy people were not paying enough tax rev- enue to the government, because they put their money into tax-ex- empt securities. Mellon called it "incredible" that tax laws allowed someone making a million dollars a year to pay not a cent in taxes, and an "almost gro- tesque" consequence that people of more modest incomes had to make up the shortfall. He understood, however, that higher tax rates did not automat- ically mean higher tax revenues. So when the tax law changes that he advocated cut tax rates, the in- come tax revenues actually hit a re- cord high at that time. Moreover,