The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/1094434
A-6 Wednesday, March 20, 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 Heritage Viewpoint by Edwin J. Feulner Emotional health My Point of View by Dr. H. K. Fenol, Jr., M.D. I was going through some well- ness materials over the internet and was impressed by an article about emotional health. It was high- ly recommended by therapists. These experts gave various ad- vices and related they use them in their own personal lives. So, they must be good then. Here's some useful guides. • Rethink the way you approach worry. Apparently, excessive wor- ry can be a "thought garbage." When confronted with worrying about something, a therapists asks the following thought path: "Can I solve the problem? And what can I do about it—anything? If I can't do anything about it, I can't worry too much about it. There's no point." • One therapist uses the "Stop , breath and think" app and uses it daily. Next time you feel tensed up, try taking a few deep breaths and relax your entire body. You'll be surprised how much it deflates something like a balloon that's ready to pop. Once you do the tech- nique, the balloon gets softer. Seemingly, it is a good thing to do now and then—like when you're driving and you get stopped by a long train or heavy traffic, when you're in a work situation and ten- sion builds up around you, when you're confronted with a big chal- lenge, etc. • Another respected therapist uses the technique of putting an end to the fear or anxiety like tem- porarily or for good. Even if the worst fear happens, you'll survive John Wesley in his sermon "More Excellent Way" [1787] said our conversations be good, "on good subjects not fluttering about anything that occurs; for what have you to do with courts and kings? It is not your business to fight over the wars, and reform the state." That was the world of Wesley; power rested in a monarch, the me- dia had yet to emerge as a power to sway the masses, and the social gospel was yet to surface. It was the social gospel champi- oned by Walter Rauschenbusch in the late 1800s that converged with populism that gave rise to the pro- gressivism we have today. Wheth- er a progressive is secular or re- ligious, the outcome is the same: use the power of government to force change. There is not a person alive who does not yearn for a perfect world as defined in their own mind. But that is not reality. Social justice warriors and pro- gressives dismiss the reality that we are locked into a cultural ma- trix. Change can occur, but forced change is perilous because those whose behavior you repressed by law drives them and their sympa- thizers underground. The progressives are now head- ed by the grandchildren of the ba- by boomers who demand radical change and have demonstrated that they will use any and all tac- tics to further their goals destroy- ing all who fail to hold to their ide- ology. Fox commentator Tucker Car- son is the latest conservative the social justice warriors have placed a hit upon. The problem is he is not following the script. On his March 11 program [Tucker Carl- son Tonight] in a long refutation to his opponents, not only refused to do penitence for his "off-color remarks of a decade ago." He ex- posed their own hypocrisy and the conservative's cowardice in stand- ing firm on what they believe. It is becoming pain- ful to listen and to eval- uate the perceived "outrages" from the progressives and so- cial justice warriors because they cher- ry-pick their targets when an offender is among their own, and they destroy those whom disagree with them. Social justice warriors have di- vided the nation into progres- sive east and west coasts, and ev- erything in-between is "Fly-over County" and chocked full of deplo- rables, racists, homophobes, mi- sogynists, xenophobes, and unde- sirables. My worldview was shaped by growing up in a small town in western Indiana of working class people who went to church and watched Andy Griffith and for cul- tural enrichment, Ed Sullivan. Our Evangelical United Breth- ren Church was a potpourri of the community with membership con- sisting of clay workers, politicians, laborers, bankers, cashiers, law- yers, factory workers, business owners, clerks, carpenters, doc- tors, and street sweepers. I am not naive to believe my hometown was a utopia and that inequalities and prejudices did not exist. However, we knew each oth- er, and I was well served by that commonality. My world was shaped by spiritu- al men and women who also strove for a better world and worked for it by persuasion. Christ was Savior of the world! Sin was still sin [and defined], and the Golden Rule was not a suggestion. That is the power of the Cross and shared community! Why I object to the social jus- tice warriors who paint my par- ents, grandparents, and forefa- thers as an embarrassment and full of social and racial phobias, is the [SJW] think that they would have be- haved differently. Jesus was confront- ed with the very same attitude two millen- nium ago by a smug people. They held at- titudes that were intel- lectual and morally su- perior to their ances- tors. Jesus said, "No you don't; you say 'If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.'" The opponents of Jesus who de- sired Him silenced and/or dead possessed the very behavior they detested in their ancestors. Jesus pressed to the point: "So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets." Social justice warriors mur- der their opponents economical- ly, socially, and spiritually; they treat the unwashed masses as out- casts, untouchables, and unworthy of life. Though they use different tac- tics, the SJW are just like those whom they detest. The difference between the SJW and myself is that I will pray for them and will not elicit the le- vers of government and the pow- er of the media be brought against them and destroy them. I want the best possible world, but I refuse to destroy others to achieve it! If this is weakness, so be it. How- ever, the Apostle Paul learned that when he was weak, Christ became strong. This will pass. What our nation will look like is debatable. One thing is sure, we must first live through it! Think about it! Points to Ponder by Rev. Ford Bond This will pass Continued on page 7 Continued on page 7 Minority View by Walter E. Williams Is income inequality fair? Continued on page 6 Continued on page 7 Some Americans have much higher income and wealth than others. Former President Barack Obama explained, "I do think at a certain point you've made enough money." An adviser to Rep. Alex- andria Ocasio-Cortez who has a Twitter account called "Every Bil- lionaire Is A Policy Failure" tweet- ed, "My goal for this year is to get a moderator to ask 'Is it morally appropriate for anyone to be a bil- lionaire? '" Democratic presiden- tial hopeful Sen. Elizabeth War- ren, in calling for a wealth tax, complained, "The rich and power- ful are taking so much for them- selves and leaving so little for ev- eryone else." These people would have an ar- gument if there were piles of mon- ey on the ground called income, with billionaires and millionaires surreptitiously getting to those piles first and taking their unfair shares. In that case, corrective public policy would require a re- distribution of the income, where- in the ill-gotten gains of the few would be taken and returned to their rightful owners. The same could be said if there were a deal- er of dollars who — because of his being a racist, sexist, multination- alist and maybe a Republican — didn't deal the dollars fairly. If he dealt millions to some and mere crumbs to others, decent public policy would demand a re-dealing of the dollars, or what some call in- come redistribution. You say, "Williams, that's lu- nacy." You're right. In a free soci- ety, people earn income by serv- ing their fellow man. Here's an example: I mow your lawn, and you pay me $40. Then I go to my grocer and demand two six-packs of beer and 3 pounds of steak. In effect, the grocer says, "Williams, you are asking your fel- low man to serve you by giving you beer and steak. What did you do to serve your fellow man? " My re- sponse is, "I mowed his lawn." The grocer says, "Prove it." That's when I produce the $40. We can think of the, say, two $20 bills as certificates of performance — proof that I served my fellow man. A system that requires that one serve his fellow man to have a claim on what he produces is far more moral than a system without such a requirement. For example, Congress can tell me, "Williams, you don't have to get out in that hot sun to mow a lawn to have a claim on what your fellow man produces. Just vote for me, and through the tax code, I will take some of what your fellow man produces and give it to you." Let's look at a few multibillion- aires to see whether they have served their fellow man well. Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, with a net worth over $ 90 billion, is the second-richest person in the world. He didn't acquire that wealth through violence. Millions of people around the world volun- tarily plunked down money to buy Microsoft products. That explains the great wealth of people such as Gates. They discovered what their fellow man want- ed and didn't have, and they found out ways to effectively produce it. Their fel- low man voluntarily gave them dollars. If Gates and others had followed President Obama's advice that "at a certain point" they'd "made enough mon- ey" and shut down their companies when they had earned their first billion or two, mankind wouldn't have most of the technological de- velopment we enjoy today. Take a look at the website Bil- lionaire Mailing List's list of cur- rent billionaires (http://tinyurl. com/yd6mme37). On it, you will find people who have made great contributions to society. Way down on the list is Gordon Earle Moore — co-founder of Intel. He has a net worth of $ 6 billion. In 1968, Moore developed and market- ed the integrated circuit, or mi- crochip, which is responsible for thousands of today's innovations, such as MRIs, advances in satel- lite technology and your desktop computer. Though Moore has ben- efited immensely from his devel- opment and marketing of the mi- crochip, his benefit pales in com- parison with how our nation and the world have benefited in terms Pursuit of the Cure by Star Parker Observations Sowell Can Republicans get elected in a diverse America? To fix the immigration crisis, change the law The Pew Research Center has produced a projected profile of what the American electorate will look like ethnically in the 2020 elections. The portrait shows a continued trend of America becoming an in- creasingly nonwhite nation and electorate. Pew projects that 66.7 percent of eligible voters in 2020 will be white. In the presidential election in 2016, 71 percent of voters were white. In 2000, 76.4 percent of eligible voters were white, 10 points more than Pew projects for 2020. When President Reagan was elected in 1980, 88 percent of the electorate was white. A number of factors are driving the ethnic changes of the country. One, of course, is the large Hispan- ic immigration of recent years. But another key factor is fertil- ity rates. Whites are having few- er children than blacks and His- panics. The political implications of these changes are profound. Nonwhite Americans vote dis- proportionately for Democrats. So, if voting patterns of nonwhite Americans stay consistent, ev- ery year it will become more dif- ficult to elect Republicans, as eth- nic and racial minorities become an increasingly larger percentage of the electorate. In 2016, Donald Trump won 58 percent of the white vote. However, A new report from the U.S. Bor- der Patrol proves that only the will- fully ignorant can doubt that we're dealing with an immigration cri- sis. "The entire system right now is at full capacity," agent Manuel Padilla said. "Actually, it's over- whelmed." Border Patrol agents apprehend- ed more than 66,000 migrants at the U.S.-Mexican border in Febru- ary. That's the highest total for a single month in almost a decade. The makeup of the migrant population has changed as well. It used to consist primarily of single men from Mexico. Now it's more likely to be families and children, arriving by the busload from Gua- temala. In February 2017, families and unaccompanied children made up 27 percent of those arrested or deemed inadmissible at the south- ern border. Two years later, it's 62 percent. Why the change? According to immigration expert David In- serra, loopholes in U.S. immigra- tion law are the culprit. Combined with a weak asylum process, they "are creating incentives for adults to use children as pawns to get in- to the U.S.," he writes in The Wall Street Journal. Consider the unintended conse- quence of the Trafficking Victim Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008. It requires the Border Pa- trol to treat unaccompanied alien children from countries other than Mexico differently. Border Patrol turns them over to the Department of Health and Human Services and lets them enter the U.S. pending an immigration-court hearing — one that may be years in the fu- ture. "Many alien children are reunit- ed with their families, who are of- ten in the country illegally as well, and never heard from again," Mr. Inserra writes. It took time for word of this pro- vision to spread to prospective migrants. The number of unac- companied children crossing the border rose gradually for sever- al years, then spiked in 2014. Yet even after President Obama called this an "urgent humanitarian situ- ation," Congress didn't act. Another loophole is more re- cent: a 2016 court case that re- quires the Department of Home- land Security to release all chil- dren, including those accompa- nied by parents, from custody. Detaining the entire family is, by law, off the table. So when a family is arrested crossing the southern border, of- ficials have two choices. One is to release the child while detaining the parents as their request for asylum is processed. But this so- called family separation is natural- ly unpopular, which leads to the second choice: Release the entire family and hope they show up at an immigration court hearing. Spoiler alert: Most of them don't. They aren't the only ones who fail to show up when and where they're supposed to. U.S. law en- sures that aliens who enter ille- gally aren't promptly removed — they're entitled to get a rul- ing on their asylum claims first. So there's been a spike in asylum claims by those who say they face a "credible fear" of prosecution. It's not hard for most of them to pass their initial hearing, but the immigration-court system that is supposed to give them a final rul- ing has a backup that averages two years. What happens in the mean- time? "Most then simply disappear into the U.S.," writes Mr. Inserra. "Some become victims of human trafficking or gangs. Few are ever removed from the country." Now you can see why propo- nents of a border wall often stress the need for "immigration reform." Because while a border wall is a necessary component — one that will certainly help control the tide of illegal immigration — it's actu-