The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/1122967
C-8 Wednesday, May 29, 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 School musicals My Point of View by Dr. H. K. Fenol, Jr., M.D. As I had indicated last week, let me now share the musical pro- gram that my other grandkid So- phia OBrian had a part in. She is the eldest daughter of my daughter Marie and son in law Rob. She goes to Oak Hill School in Evansville. On Thursday May 16, their school presented a very delight- ful program called "The Best Lit- tle Theater in Town" which enter- tained the audience with a mix of songs and stories and dancing and humor. I did not realize how challenging it was for the cast be- cause of the beautiful songs and long lines they had to deliver. These kids I think are ages 7 to 14. It is amazing to hear the lead singers carry the tunes very well and with just a minimal amount of directing and cueing by their music teacher-director. The kids showed confidence and poise and good timing. The music teacher made song choices that were really pleasant and fitting for the theme. The whole program was about an hour with a brief break in the mid- I make it a policy to stay as far away from political rhetoric as possible as I handle the Gospel of Christ. As Paul wrote the church- es, "There is neither Jew nor Gen- tile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus; and "For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free— and we were all given the one Spir- it to drink." We could say this can be inter- preted to mean that in the Church, "There is neither republican nor democrat, neither conservative nor liberal, nor progressive nor orthodox, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. However, abortion "rights" is one issue that has confronted the church that cannot be ignored. With Alabama taking a hard stand against abortion [and other states are tightening their laws], the issue will end up at steps of the Supreme Court. Abortion is not just a legal issue; the decision to terminate a preg- nancy is a moral issue because it ends a potential human life. All a law does is give sanction to taking a life, with no penalties. Abortion as practiced around the world is for birth control and not to safeguard the life of the mother. That is a fact. Guttmacher Institute reports that 40 percent of unintended pregnancies are abort- ed, and more than 85 percent of U.S. abortions are performed on unmarried women. The statistics for A frican-wom- en per capita is much higher and can be considered government sponsored infanticide. Regardless of the statistics, the arguments for "right to choose," and all the mental gymnastics used by Planned Parenthood and their advocates, abortion is terminat- ing a life. Period. I re- fuse to accede to the usual verbiage of fe- tus, cells, or tissue. Conception produc- es life if allowed to be carried out to term. Terminating a pregnancy is kill- ing something. Drugs used against viruses and bacteria are killing the pathogen; it is not terminating a sickness of cells. I refuse to become caught up in the socioeconomic discussion of whether a "fetus" is a viable preg- nancy given impoverishment. As one legislator remarked, "Kill it now, or kill it later." I refuse to be drawn into the per- sonal rights of the woman to con- trol her body. The laws and soci- ety have told men that they have no say so beyond conception; it is her choice and hers alone, except if she keeps it you're on the finan- cial hook for 18 plus years. Is she decided to kill it, tough! I decided to take the gloves off once the governor of Virgin- ia Ralph Northam, who is an MD, made a barbaric argument as to the right of terminating a preg- nancy after birth. That is murder, my friend. I refuse to call the baby an embodied sack of cells. The right to choose movement is infatuated with death. That is why I ponder, "Why are we having this argument? " The abortionists use nebulous words that are ambigu- ous when describing killing an un- born baby. Therefore, by de- fining the unborn as cells, postembryonic period, embryo, blas- tocyst, fetuses, and/or unviable life, no moral issue is debated. The debate is also divorced from sexu- al activity, which is the primary vehicle for procreation. That is the way it is and has been for humanity for thousands of years. Nothing has changed in our era, except the introduction of birth control and the availability of abortion for "un- wanted pregnancy." Therefore, birth control and abortion makes sex a recreational activity, divorced from family and the reproduction of our species. What is left out of the "abor- tion debate" is that before Rove v. Wade, many states had provisions in their laws to terminate a preg- nancy for rape, incest, and the life of the mother. Those are valid mor- al and ethical grounds to consider. Abortion takes and destroys life and censures any and all debate. The Church historically embraced life. The challenge is for anyone to produce historical records in any era, except the modern, where the Church embraced death of the un- born and the infirm. [Euthanasia is the next issue for the aged, and it is coming.] Stated again-abortion kills. I ask this. Would Christ champion the right to choose death? I suggest no more than He would support the Points to Ponder by Rev. Ford Bond Why are we having this discussion? Continued on page 9 Continued on page 9 Continued on page 9 Minority View by Walter E. Williams Socialist promises Continued on page 9 Presidential contenders are in a battle to out give one another. Sen- ator Elizabeth Warren proposes a whopping $50,000 per student col- lege loan forgiveness. Senator Ber- nie Sanders proposes free health care for all Americans plus illegal aliens. Most Democratic presiden- tial candidates promise free stuff that includes free college, univer- sal income, "Medicare for All" and debt forgiveness. Their socialist predecessors made promises too. "Freedom and Bread" was the slogan used by Adolf Hitler during the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazi) campaign against president Paul von Hindenburg. Hitler even promised, "In the Third Reich ev- ery German girl will find a hus- band." Stalin promised a great so- cialist-Marxist society that includ- ed better food and better worker conditions. China's Mao Zedong promised democratic constitution- alism and the dream that "farmers have land to till." These, and oth- er promises, gave Mao the broad political support he needed to win leadership of the entire country in 1949. Socialism promises a utopia that sounds good, but those promises are never realized. It most often results in massive human suffer- ing. Capitalism fails miserably when compared with a heaven or utopia promised by socialism. But any earthly system is going to come up short in such a compari- son. Mankind must make choices among alternative economic sys- tems that actually exist. It turns out that for the common man cap- italism, with all of its alleged short- comings, is superior to any system yet devised to deal with his every- day needs and desires. By most any measure of human well-being, people who live in countries to- ward the capitalistic end of the economic spectrum are far bet- ter off than their fellow men who live in coun- tries toward the social- ist end. Why? Capitalism, or what some call free markets, is rela- tively new in human history. Pri- or to capitalism, the way individ- uals amassed great wealth was by looting, plundering and enslaving their fellow man. With the rise of capitalism, it became possible to amass great wealth by serving and pleasing your fellow man. Capital- ists seek to discover what people want and produce and market it as efficiently as possible as a means to profit. A historical example of this process would be John D. Rocke- feller, whose successful market- ing drove kerosene prices down from 58 cents a gallon in 1865 to 7 cents in 1900. Henry Ford became rich by producing cars for the com- mon man. Both Ford's and Rock- efeller's personal benefits pale in comparison to the benefits re- ceived by the common man who had cheaper kerosene and cheaper and more convenient transporta- tion. There are literally thousands of examples of how mankind's life ha been made better by those in the pursuit of profits. Here's my question to you: Are the people who, by their actions, created un- precedented convenience, longer life expectancy and a more pleas- ant life for the ordinary person — and became wealthy in the process — deserving of all the scorn and ridicule heaped upon them by intellectuals and political hustlers today? In many intellectu- al and political circles, the pursuit of profits is seen as evil. However, this pursuit forces en- trepreneurs to find ways to either please people efficiently or go bankrupt. Of course, they could mess up and avoid bankruptcy if they can get government to bail them out or give them protection against competition. Nonprofit organizations have an easier time of it. As a matter of fact, people tend to be the most displeased with services received from public schools, motor vehi- cle departments and other govern- ment agencies. Nonprofits can op- erate whether they please people or not. That's because they derive their compensation through taxes. I'm sure that we'd be less satisfied with supermarkets if they had the power to take our money through taxes, as opposed to being forced to find ways to get us to voluntari- ly give them our money. By the way, I'm not making an outright condemnation of social- ism. I run my household on the Marxist principle, "From each ac- cording to his ability, to each ac- cording to his needs." That system works when you can remember the names of all involved. Walter E. Williams is a profes- sor of economics at George Mason University. Pursuit of the Cure by Star Parker Alabama abortion law on right track Heritage Viewpoint By Edwin J. Feulner Taking aim at the Arms Trade Treaty When we talk about "pro-life" in our national discussion about abortion, "life" is understood to be about the unborn child in the mother's womb. But it would serve us well to expand our understanding about what "pro-life" means. We should understand that re- specting the sanctity of life is key to the values and behaviors in gen- eral that sustain and nourish all our lives today and create the nec- essary conditions for our future. A just-released report from the National Center for Health Statis- tics, a unit of the Centers for Dis- ease Control and Prevention, re- ports that the total number of births in the United States in 2018 was down 2 percent from 2017 and is the lowest number of births in the country in 32 years. It also reports that the gener- al fertility rate — the number of births per 1,000 women aged 15 - 44 — was also down 2 percent and is at a record low. The total fertility rate needs to be 2,100 births per 1,000 wom- en to keep our overall population at steady state — not shrinking. It now stands at 1,728 per 1,000 women. If the alternative to "pro-life" is so-called "pro-choice," the mind- set of legal abortion on demand, the latter is capturing, and de- stroying, American society. We are choosing to extinguish our- selves. It turns out that "reproductive freedom," the banner under which "pro-choice" operates, translates into the freedom to not reproduce. University of Southern Califor- nia demographer Dowell Myers calls the declining birthrates we are witnessing a "barometer of de- spair." Birthrates decline, according to Myers, when people are not opti- mistic about the future. How about the general collapse of the marriage institution? In 1960, 72 percent of Ameri- cans 18 and above were married. By 2016, this was down to 50 per- cent. At a conference at the Vatican in 2014, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, for- Some of the most notable policy victories take time — and they sel- dom generate banner headlines. Take the Arms Trade Treaty. There's an excellent chance that you're saying, "The what? " There was a relatively minor ripple in the news cycle when President Trump announced he was withdrawing the United States from it. But believe me, it matters. And it was the right move. The Arms Trade Treaty (AT T) probably sounded harmless enough to most people when the United Nations first voted on it about a decade ago. Its goal: "es- tablishing common international standards for the import, export and transfer of conventional arms." What could go wrong? Plenty. And The Heritage Foun- dation's Ted Bromund, who has monitored the AT T from the start, wasted no time in sounding the alarm bells. "Although putatively intended as [a] measure that would reduce conflicts and limit the ability of ter- rorists and organized crime to ob- tain weapons, the treaty contem- plated by the resolution would in reality be a license to almost all states, no matter how irresponsi- ble, to buy and sell arms," he wrote in a 2009 report. "The projected treaty would en- danger U.S. arms export control policy, clash with the Constitution, offer a dangerous justification for dictatorial rule, and make it ille- gal under international law for the U.S. to support freedom fighters abroad." Unfortunately, it often takes more than one report — no mat- ter how well-reasoned — to stop a bad idea in its tracks. So Mr. Bro- mund kept at it. He attended the 2012, 2013, 2015 and 2018 Arms Trade Treaty con- ferences. He even addressed the United Nations in 2012 and 2013. Along the way, he published more than 200 related reports, op-eds, scholarly articles, lectures and blog posts on the Arms Trade Treaty. He also gave countless me- dia interviews. On the other side, in full support of the treaty, was a large coalition of gun-control proponents, and left-wing, non-governmental orga- nizations. They campaigned hard, and found a sympathetic ear in the Obama White House. In 2013, Sec- retary of State John Kerry signed the Arms Trade Treaty. The Senate, however, never rati- fied the treaty. And now, with Pres- ident Trump's announcement, it's off the table. So what's wrong with the Arms Trade Treaty? For one thing, as the White House pointed out, it pro- vides "a platform for those who would seek to constrain our abil- ity to sell arms to our allies and partners." That's a key goal of the Arms Trade Treaty's support- ers: tying the hands of the Unit- ed States (which, unlike many oth- er signatories to treaties, actually honors its commitments). Another problem: The Arms Trade Treaty has "a track record of being used by groups to try and overturn sovereign national decisions on arms exports," the White House says. No one who cares about national sovereignty should consent to such an agree- ment. Just ask the British, who have been sued repeatedly by the activists in the name of the treaty. Then there's the matter of the Second Amendment. Oh, the trea- ty's supporters assure us that the AT T won't affect our right to own guns. But as Mr. Bromund points out, they also refuse to make that clear in the treaty text. So sure, the treaty (at least as now written) is no gun grab. But gun-control ac- tivists could still use it to advance their goals. And let's not forget a major flaw in the Arms Trade Treaty, at least if we're to take it seriously. China and Russia, both of which are ma- jor arms exporters, aren't party of the treaty. So President Trump was right to say he was un-signing the Arms Trade Treaty. But we shouldn't stop there. The treaty still has