The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/1135273
B-4 Wednesday, June 26, 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 I have often wondered why Christianity is so violently at- tacked from within. You would be hard pressed to find adherents of Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and a host of others that seek to under- mine the central teachings. But Christianity has since the mid-1700s been under attack from within. The faithful in cen- turies before disregard these as- saults and embraced persecution from without and flourished; this not been the case from the sedi- tion from within. Post-Christian society in Amer- ica is the result of the centuries of the hammering away at Christian morality and ethics; what we are witnessing is foundation of our cul- ture crumbling. Those who wish away the idea of a Creator is their person's pre- rogative; however, what we have lived through is attacks by men and women who hate Christiani- ty, and by extension God. There assaults demand an answer to the question "where is God" when a tragedy occurs? Jack Kerwick in a recent column ex- plained how the skep- tic arrives at the con- clusion there is no God: "If an all-power- ful and all-good God exists, then He should be able to stop evil and He should want to stop evil. However, evil ex- ists. Therefore, an all-powerful and all-good God does not exist." Christians shirk away from the assault because they feel there is no concrete answer beyond theo- logical axioms of Christianity. Therefore, let us replace the pow- er of the Cross with social justice. The wise apologist for Christ should answer: "You ask why evil exists." The philosophers and prophets of old had much to say of its origins and cause. I suggest we look into this question together, and while we are discussing this is- sue we should also ex- amine its twin: "Why does goodness exist? " The problem of evil existing along with goodness is legitimate question; how can evil and goodness exist to- gether? Christianity's first reply would be "In a world devoid of God, there is no such thing as evil; for evil is a moral concept, and in a world without God, there can be no objective morality [i.e. no evil]." The world in which we live abounds with pain and suffering. These are descriptive terms, but do not in themselves define or de- scribe evil. If we claim that murder is evil, we have just defined it as a mor- al offense. But without God there Points to Ponder by Rev. Ford Bond Goodness overrides evil Continued on page 5 My second story telling, Korea My Point of View by Dr. H. K. Fenol, Jr., M.D. I had no idea what it would look like for the brief time we would be there. A fter a 13 hour flight from Detroit to Inchon International Airport, it was our plan to stay for 2.5 days in that country because it would be another four hours flight to the Philippines if we had decided to go through a two hour customs clearance and change of plane for the last leg of our trip. No way. That would total 17-18 hours of flight time and there's no way we would do that. On a side note, Ko- rea used to have an airport called Kimpo International Airport. My mother's maternal surname is Kimpo. Hhhhmmm. There's been comments when I was growing up in the Philippines that there was a connection between Korea and my family tree. Now, lets get back to the story. Upon entering the airport prem- ises, one is impressed about the size and cleanliness and orderli- ness of the place. Clearance was quick, we had index fingertip ID and photo recording as we passed through the immigration and cus- toms counter. Then off to lug- gage claim and to the exit. A pre- arranged van shuttle picked us up and then off we headed to a hotel in Kukdo City. The trip to the heart of the city from the airport was about 30 min- utes. What impressed me was the light to moderate traffic, the well marked highways, the cleanliness and smoothness of the roads. An- other thing that impressed me was the presence of electronic gad- gets on the vehcile dashboard— cell phone, a GPS showing vehicle Continued on page 5 Continued on page 5 Minority View by Walter E. Williams Black education decline Continued on page 5 Continued on page 5 New York Mayor Bill de Bla- sio says that the city's special- ized high schools have a diversity problem. He's joined by New York City Schools Chancellor Richard A. Carranza, educators, students and community leaders who want to fix the diversity problem. I bet you can easily guess what they will do to "improve" the racial mix of students (aka diversity). If you guessed they would pro- pose eliminating the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test as the sole criterion for admissions, go to the head of the class. The Specialized High Schools Admis- sions Test is an examination that is administered to New York City's eighth- and ninth-grade students. By state law, it is used to deter- mine admission to all but one of the city's nine specialized high schools. It's taken as axiomatic that the relatively few blacks admitted to these high-powered schools is somehow tied to racial discrimi- nation. In a June 2, 2018 "Chalk- beat" article (https://tinyurl. com/y64delc3), de Blasio writes: "The problem is clear. Eight of our most re- nowned high schools — including Stuyves- ant High School, Bronx High School of Science and Brook- lyn Technical High School — rely on a sin- gle, high-stakes exam. The Specialized High School Admissions Test isn't just flawed — it's a roadblock to jus- tice, progress and academic ex- cellence." Let's look at a bit of history to raise some questions about the mayor's diversity hypothe- sis. Dr. Thomas Sowell provides some interesting statistics about Stuyvesant High School in his book "Wealth, Poverty and Pol- itics." He reports that, "In 1938, the proportion of blacks attending Stuyvesant High School, a special- ized school, was almost as high as the proportion of blacks in the pop- ulation of New York City." Since then, it has spiraled downward. In 1979, blacks were 12.9 % of students at Stuyvesant, falling to 4.8 % in 1995. By 2012, The New York Times reported that blacks were 1.2 % of the stu- dent body. What explains the decline? None of the usual explanations for racial disparities make sense. In other words, would one want to argue that there was less racial discrimination in 1938? Or, argue that in 1938 the "lega- cy of slavery" had not taken effect whereby now it is in full bloom? Genetic or environmental argu- ments cannot explain why blacks of an earlier generation were able to meet the demanding mental test standards to get into an elite high school. Socioeconomic con- ditions for blacks have improved dramatically since 1938. The only Continued on page 5 Prince's enterprise makes for a better world Heritage Viewpoint by Edwin J. Feulner Pursuit of the Cure by Star Parker President Trump is delivering Lucid Moments By Bart Stinson Depravity as a civil right According to news stories, the Trump campaign fired pollsters who allegedly leaked polling re- sults that show President Trump performing poorly against Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders in bat- tleground states. Regardless of the accuracy of the story, what can polling really tell us now? At this time in 2015, polls were showing Hillary Clinton 17 points ahead of Donald Trump. According to Gallup, Ronald Reagan's approval rating was about the same as President Trump's at the same time into his presidency. In November 1984, a year and a half later, Reagan won a histor- ic landslide victory, winning 49 of 50 states, losing only Walter Mon- dale's home state of Minnesota. Turning around the ship of state is not an easy affair, and it takes time. What happens in November 2020 will reflect three things: the skill with which respective candi- dates run their campaigns; the ex- tent to which their message reso- nates; and what actually happens between now and then on the eco- nomic, social and international fronts. Consider Reagan's famous ques- tion that propelled him to an upset victory in 1980 and a landslide vic- tory in 1984. "Are you better off than you were four years ago? " How do we measure this? The task of the historian is not to compile mere sequences of facts, dates and events, but to interpret them, to make sense of them, to explain consequences and impli- cations—why these facts matter. And so history isn't just a tran- script of the past, but an explana- tion of today. How did these past facts change who we are and what we care about now? I used to believe that the genius of Martin Luther King Jr. was to state the obvious, and then hold us to it. He didn't invent equality and fairness, after all. We already be- lieved in it, or thought we did. When he said "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice," that was a paraphrase of an 1853 sermon by white preacher Theodore Parker. It implied the bedrock assumption of American exceptionalism, that we are on the right side of history. King identified our most cher- ished beliefs about ourselves as Americans, then challenged us to do the hard work of living up to our own exalted self-image. It seemed obvious, before he ever said it, that Americans should "not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." But it turns out that was not obvi- ous at all. In 2019, very few Demo- crats still believe in color-blind government or politics. There were lofty, noble lessons to take away from King's teaching, and from the Civil Rights move- ment's hard-won refinement of American equality: that we Amer- icans owe one another a fair shake, that we can't rightly turn a blind eye to the government's habitu- al mistreatment of our fellow cit- izens. But there were other lessons, not so lofty, not so noble: the squeaky wheel gets the grease. White guilt can be lucrative for professional victims. Identity politics can be a cottage industry for activists and unsavory hustlers until they gath- er enough momentum of influence to dictate public policy. These toxic lessons are at odds with the lessons based on our as- pirational American exceptional- ism. The culture of grievance has, unfortunately, shaped the civic en- gagement of several other ethnic groups that eagerly imitated Black identity politics. This led to gro- tesque alliances that empowered genocidal abortion of more than 18 million Black American young- sters since I graduated from high school. This same alliance has bar- ricaded the exits for Black and His- panic children from failed urban school systems. Eventually even vanilla white males learned how to harness the techniques of exaggerated victim- hood to obscure and excuse the content of their character. The sophisticated psychological strategy to transform American culture and public policy on ho- mosexual behavior, the so-called "gay agenda," was laid out in "A f- ter the Ball," a 1989 book by two Harvard-educated homosexuals, Marshall Kirk and Hunter Mad- sen. Kirk, who died at 47 of undis- closed causes, was a neuropsychi- atric researcher. Madsen's exper- tise was in political messaging. Kirk and Madsen proposed a three-part strategy: desensitiza- tion, jamming and conversion. It has been described as Orwellian. Without rehearsing the triumph of homosexuals following Kirk's and Madsen's blueprint, suffice it to say that their techniques work. Homosexual activists are in the driver's seat now. But will that be good for rank- and-file homosexuals? Or will they be victims of their apparent vic- tory, like the aborted Black chil- dren? Will they be deprived of the legal right to seek therapy for their condition? Will lesbian athletes be deprived of scholarships and rec- ognition in their sports by male ho- mosexual intruders? Will boys with same-sex attrac- tions be deprived of safe havens like Boy Scouts in which to grow out of it, shielded from predato- ry adults? Will confused, vulnera- ble adolescent girls be able to ful- ly participate in school and extra- curricular activities without being subtly groomed by lesbian talent Say you're an entrepreneur, and you've invented what you're sure is a great product. Where would you go to get investors on board? Chances are, you didn't say "Buckingham Palace." And you almost certainly didn't think of Prince Andrew, the Duke of York. But you know what? You should have. The younger brother of Prince Charles hasn't been in the entre- preneur game for very long — only since 2014, in fact. But in that short time, his group Pitch@Palace has made a big difference in the lives of quite a few business owners. The prince's initiative operates in more than 60 countries and has helped some 865 entrepreneurs. Its efforts to "amplify and acceler- ate" their work has helped creat- ed almost 3,700 jobs and generat- ed more than $1 billion in econom- ic activity. I recently had the opportunity to talk with Prince Andrew at a dinner I attended in Seoul, South Korea. It was fascinating to learn more about his initiative and some of the businesses that Pitch@Pal- ace has helped. Although I mentioned Buck- ingham Palace above, that doesn't mean hopeful entrepreneurs must travel to London to compete for inves- tors at a Pitch@Palace event. The prince was in Toronto last month, and two dozen Cana- dian entrepreneurs lined up to pitch their business ideas to him there. Tens of thousands of entre- preneurs from all around the world — Asia, A frica, North America and elsewhere — have applied at doz- ens of events. And although the events are in the form of a competition, many of the "losers" gain valuable expo- sure that enables them to attract investors as well. Interestingly enough, many of the businesses that have compet- ed at Pitch@Palace events are in the health-tech field. It's fair to say that Prince Andrew's work has the potential not only to save money, but to save lives. Take Helpwear, which makes a special wristwatch that detects when a user is suffer- ing a heart attack and automatically con- tacts emergency med- ical services. Or consider Cam- bridge Medical Tech- nologies. It makes an electronic bandage that measures bio- markers in the fluid beneath the skin. In only seconds, doctors can monitor for such conditions as sepsis, dia- betes and alcohol abuse. The ban- dage can be worn all day, so pa- tients can be monitored at home instead of the hospital. Or take Mursla, a Cambridge- based biopsy company that spe- cializes in cancer detection and prevention. Their product: a device that can uncover tumors through a simple blood sample. According Pierre Arsene, Murs- la's co-founder and CEO, tumors shed small parts of themselves in- to the bloodstream. His device us-