The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/1114435
C-8 Wednesday, May 8, 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 National Day of Prayer My Point of View by Dr. H. K. Fenol, Jr., M.D. There are some great moments we encounter in our community. On May 2, Thursday, we cele- brated the National Day of Prayer in Pike County over at the court- house at noontime. There was a relatively good crowd represent- ing different faith groups, and dif- ferent pastors of different Church- es attending and some delivering their wonderful message about prayer, unity, repentance, love and gratitude. The Pike Central Swing Choir did an awesome ren- dition of the National Anthem. The acoustics in our Courthouse is tru- ly amazing, it sounded like a thou- sand angels were singing from the heavens. It just gave you goose bumps and sometimes it choked you up. Chuck Froehle led the Pledge of Allegiance, Pastor Leon Pome- roy gave the opening greeting, Jim Gidicumb gave the opening prayer, and Petersburg Mayor R.C. Klipsch read the scripture. Recently I attended a graduation ceremony at Southern Indiana Uni- versity and the mood of course was festive. The usual acknowledge- ments were offered to the faculty and parents of the now esteemed graduates. The students were challenged to make a difference in their world [which all graduates will hear] and strive to fulfill their potentials. One thing was missing. There was no mention of the spiritual as- pects of life. No invocation, dedi- cation, or benediction. Long ago the secular universities banished God from its halls, but Higher Ed- ucation has failed in its duty to help create a well-rounded student. Therefore, many of the newly minted graduates were equipped with no moral compass, and lacked the admonition that the world they imagine is out there, cannot fill the spiritual void. What the graduate's needed to hear was a few words about Christ. They needed to hear about a gifted student who we know as Paul, who wrote to the Church at Corinth "And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with elo- quence or human wis- dom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I re- solved to know noth- ing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him cruci- fied. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a dem- onstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God's power. Paul, steeped in the knowledge of the age, set aside the wisdom of the elders, and preached Christ! Learning is good, but without a spiritual anchor is an empty shell. I likewise do not have anything new to say to you, except Christ and Him Crucified. That sounds like a letdown but it is not. We live in a world where tech- nology consumes our day. We have 500 cable channels to watch—but there is nothing on. We are en- meshed with Face- book, texting, and smart apps; but we cannot communicate interpersonally with one another. We want some- thing new for the same problems and evils that plague us—that plagued our ances- tors. I give you noth- ing new except Christ and Him Crucified. Many centuries ago in the great city of Athens, a segment of the cit- izens spent their time doing noth- ing but talking about and listening for the latest ideas. This is similar to what we desire in our age-a new idea to cure the ills of life. This man Paul told the men of Athens about God-the God they built philosophies around yet did not know. He told them that God "made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appoint- Points to Ponder by Rev. Ford Bond A commencement address Continued on page 9 Continued on page 9 Continued on page 9 Minority View by Walter E. Williams Discrimination and disparities Continued on page 9 Continued on page 9 My longtime friend and col- league Dr. Thomas Sowell has just published a revised and en- larged edition of "Discrimination and Disparities." It lays waste to myth after myth about the causes of human differences not only in the United States but around the globe. Throughout the book, Sow- ell shows that socioeconomic out- comes differ vastly among individ- uals, groups and nations in ways that cannot be easily explained by any one factor, whether it's genet- ics, sex or race discrimination or a history of gross mistreatment that includes expulsion and genocide. In his book "The Philadelphia Negro" (1899), W.E.B. Du Bois posed the question as to what would happen if white people lost their prejudices overnight. He said that it would make little difference to most blacks. He said: "Some few would be promoted, some few would get new places — the mass would remain as they are" until the younger generation began to "try harder" and the race "lost the om- nipresent excuse for failure: prej- udice." Sowell points out that if his- torical injustices and persecu- tion were useful explanations of group disadvantage, Jews would be some of the poor- est and least-educat- ed people in the world today. Few groups have been victimized down through histo- ry as have the Jews. Despite being histori- cal targets of hostility and lethal violence, no one can argue that as a result Jews are the most disadvan- taged people. Jews are not alone in persecu- tion either. The number of over- seas Chinese slaughtered by Viet- namese mobs and the number of Armenians slaughtered by mobs in the Ottoman Empire in just one year exceeds the number of black Americans lynched in the histo- ry of the U.S. From 1882-1968, 4,743 total lynchings occurred in the United States, of which 3,446 of the victims were black. Sowell concludes this section suggest- ing that it is dangerous for soci- ety to depict outcome differenc- es as evidence or proof of malevo- lent actions that need to be coun- terattacked or avenged. Politicians and others who are now calling for reparations to blacks for slav- ery should take note of Sowell's argument. There's consider- able handwringing among educational "experts" about the black/white academic achievement gap. Part of the persistence of that gap can be laid at the feet of educators who replaced what worked with what sounded good. One notable example of success is the achievement of students at the all-black Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C., from 1870 to 1955. During that period, Dun- bar students frequently outscored white students on achievement tests in the Washington, D.C., ar- ea. Sowell, who studied Dunbar and other high-achieving black schools, says, Dunbar "had un- sparing standards for both school work and for such behavioral qual- ities a punctuality and social de- meanor. Dunbar's homework re- quirements were more than most other public schools. Some Dun- Continued on page 9 Iran feels the consequences of its action Heritage Viewpoint by Edwin J. Feulner Pursuit of the Cure by Star Parker Biden launches presidential campaign with lies Lucid Moments By Bart Stinson The right for medication? We can all agree with Joe Biden that "we are in a battle for the soul of this nation." Biden's video announcing his presidential candidacy provides the best raw material we could ask for regarding how he sees this bat- tle. In this opening salvo of his cam- paign, Biden serves up as his cen- terpiece transparent lies and dis- tortions about President Trump's remarks following the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, in Au- gust 2017. In other words, Biden makes a pretty good case why President Trump will be reelected. A major factor that drove many working-class Americans into the Republican column in 2016 was that so many were sick and tired of what they know in their heart to be true being pushed to the side- lines and displaced by intolerant left-wing political correctness and distortions. Really, folks, does any sane person really believe that Donald Trump thinks neo-Nazis are "very fine people"? And that even if he has such a sick and distorted side, he would blatantly say it for pub- lic consumption at a press confer- ence? Does anyone really think that if Donald Trump were sympathet- ic to neo-Nazis and white suprem- acists, he would have appointed Nikki Haley, the daughter of Indi- an immigrants and former gover- nor of South Carolina who signed legislation to remove the Confed- erate flag from the state's capitol grounds, to be America's ambas- sador to the United Nations? Anyone reading the readily available transcripts of President Trump's remarks on Charlottes- ville will see, if they care about the truth — a big assumption these days — that "very fine people" on both sides referred to the demon- stration regarding taking down When I was out of the country about 40 years ago, I received the sad news that an uncle had died in Oakland City. He was a lifelong forklift driver at Whirlpool in his late 40s or early 50s. There was no email, no Inter- net, and overseas telephone was insanely expensive back then, so I didn't get many details. He had enjoyed his life, denied himself very little, and had a lot of abdom- inal fat to show for it. A couple of years later, when I asked his son about the cause of death, he replied "cheeseburgers." In other words, he clogged his car- diac arteries with cholesterol and died of a heart attack. Despite a lot fewer cheeseburg- ers, my grandmother had died sud- denly of the same problem a few years earlier. She was in her own yard, in the middle of some do-it- yourself projects, about this time of year. And then she was gone. She wasn't the only one in my lineage who died of blocked ar- teries. And so when I got my own diagnosis 20 years ago and they wheeled me across a Las Vegas parking lot to Sunrise Hospital, you might have expected me to ride that gurney with a sense of doom. But the medical science had ad- vanced so far that my main con- cern was whether my car would be towed from the clinic lot be- fore I went home the next morn- ing. I knew I was going home after my angioplasty, the operation that would have saved my uncle and my grandma. And it wasn't just a slick new operation under the hood that bought me these past 20 years. It was statin drugs, paired with pe- riodic liver function testing. And a symphony of pharmaceuticals that have tamed my high blood pres- sure and diabetes, without insulin injections. I lift weights and swim laps at the YMCA now. I walk miles across town because I feel like it. In the summer, I jump off diving boards with grandkids, or swim off West Coast beaches. I hike in the woods if the insects aren't too fierce. And so I am unable to pile on when others denounce Big Phar- ma or the medical industry. I am deeply grateful to them, not just for saving my bacon, but for the sacri- fices they had to make before they ever made a nickel off us. Nobody was born a surgeon or pharmacist. They were born with two arms and two legs, and they only got 24 hours in each day, just like us. But when high school friends were patrolling the mall, the future medical professionals were home cramming for Saturday morning AP tests. When we came back to the dorm from Kirkwood Avenue, they were still bent over organic chemistry homework. I am grateful, also, to the imper- sonal corporations that developed my medications. There is great le- gal and financial risk in pharma- ceutical research and develop- ment. Most new medicines are money losers. Research and reg- ulatory compliance are incredibly expensive, without any guarantee of a payoff in the end. When the pharmaceutical com- pany finally does produce a win- ner, it is begrudged high profits that it needs to cover all the los- ers, all the medicines that crashed and burned, and to finance the next promising idea. Critics sud- denly materialize to denounce the company's greed. It costs nothing to claim other people's stuff, of course, or to claim other people's innovation and diligence as your own "human right." But it also discourages further innovation and diligence. Invest- ment and risk-taking can and will cease if we swoop in to dispossess innovators just as their efforts are about to pay off. And therefore such class warfare victimizes all of us, not just the pharmaceutical companies. In some ways, the pharmaceuti- cal industry is a victim of its own public successes. We don't hear about a miraculous drug until it's marketed on television or recom- mended by a physician. We rare- ly hear anything about the ideas "Maximum pressure." That's how the Trump administration de- scribes its approach toward Iran — and lately, it's really been living up to that billing. Early in April, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard was being designated a for- eign terrorist organization. And now administration officials have ratcheted up the pressure even more: Eight countries that import Iranian oil won't continue getting waivers from U.S. sanctions. Turning the screws tends to get people's attention, so it wasn't surprising to hear Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif decry this lat- est move. To hear him tell it, it's either a clumsy attempt at regime change, or outright war-monger- ing by the U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emir- ates. Mr. Zarif claims this "B Team," as he calls it, "have all shown an interest in dragging the United States into a conflict," he told Fox News host Chris Wallace. "I do not believe that President Trump wants to do that. I believe that President Trump ran on a campaign prom- ise of not bringing the United States into an- other war." What's really going on, of course, is that the world's largest state sponsor of ter- rorism is finally start- ing to feel the conse- quences of its actions. Zarif spoke from what Mr. Bolton dubbed a "carefully prepared pro- paganda script" because the ad- ministration's "maximum pres- sure" is making it harder for Iran to export not just oil, but terrorism. Designating the Revolutionary Guard Corps — which Middle East expert James Phillips describes as "the sword and shield of Iran's Is- lamic revolution" — as a terror- ist organization is entirely appro- priate. The Guard not only crush- es political opposition to the revo- lution at home, it supports Iran's wide network of foreign terrorist proxies. More than 600 American ser- vicemen in Iraq have died at the hands of proxy forces enabled by the Revolu- tionary Guard, which also controls Iran's ballistic missile pro- gram. In short, the Guard is a dangerous and de- stabilizing organiza- tion that specializes in murder and mayhem. Designating it a ter- rorist group is more than just a fit- ting moniker, though: It gives the U.S. government additional tools for applying sanctions against the Guard and all foreign entities that do business with them, their sub- sidiaries and their front compa- nies. "These added sanctions will drain away resources that could be used to export terrorism, thus helping bolster the security of the U.S. and its allies," writes Mr. Phil- lips. "This will also benefit the Ira- nian people, who are the chief vic- tims of the Revolutionary Guard."