The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/1173114
C-10 Wednesday, October 2, 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 Points to Ponder by Rev. Ford Bond Enquiring minds want to know My Point of View by Dr. H. K. Fenol, Jr., M.D. Highlights from Alaska Minority View by Walter E. Williams Youth and ignorance Continued on page 11 Continued on page 11 Continued on page 11 Continued on page 11 Camille Paglia is a professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts in Phil- adelphia, where she has been a faculty member since 1984. Pa- glia describes herself as trans- gender, but unlike so many oth- er transgender people, she is pro- capitalism and hostile to those who'd restrict free speech. She's a libertarian. As to modern ideas that include "gender-inclusive pronouns" such as zie, sie and zim, Paglia says it is lunacy. In a 2017 interview, Paglia was espe- cially irritated by the thought po- lice running college campuses today. In defending University of Toronto professor Jordan Peter- son, who has become a pariah for his refusal to cave in to nonsen- sical gender-inclusive pronouns, Paglia said that the English lan- guage was created by great art- ists such as Chaucer and Shake- speare, Wordsworth and Joyce. She added: "How dare you, you sniveling little maniac, tell us how we're gonna use pronouns! Go take a hike." On feminism, Paglia criticizes what she calls the "antisex and re- pressively doctrinaire side of fem- inism." She calls it "victim femi- nism" and complains that "every- thing we'd won in the 1990s has been totally swept away. Now we have this endless privileging of victimhood, with a pathological vulnerability seen as the default human mode." Every- one must yield to it "in the workplace, in uni- versities, in the de- mand for safe spaces." Paglia adds, "What I am saying throughout my work is that girls who are indoctrinat- ed to see men not as equals but as oppres- sors and rapists are condemned to remain in a perma- nently juvenile condition for life." Paglia's bold statements got her in a bit of hot water last April. University of the Arts students demanded that she be fired over public comments she'd made that were not wholly sympathetic to the #MeToo movement, as well as for an interview with the Weekly Standard that they called "trans- phobic." That latter denunciation is particularly slapstick, since Pa- glia describes herself as "trans- gender," writes Tunku Varadara- jan, Hoover Institution's institu- tional editor, in his Aug. 30 Wall Street Journal article "A Feminist Capitalist Professor Under Fire." The students' demand that Pa- glia be fired fell on deaf ears. For- tunately, there are a few college presidents with guts and com- mon sense. President David Yag- er is one of them. He wrote in an open letter to students: "Art- ists over the centuries have suffered censor- ship, and even perse- cution, for the expres- sion of their beliefs through their work. My answer is simple: not now, not at UArts." There's another part of this story that's particularly interest- ing considering today's young peoples' love of socialism. Paglia says that children now "are raised in a far more affluent period. Even people without much money have cellphones, televisions, and ac- cess to cars. They're raised in an air-conditioned environment. I can still remember when there was no air-conditioning." Paglia says: "Everything is so easy now. The stores are so plen- tifully supplied. You just go in and buy fruits and vegetables from all over the world." Young people ig- norant of history and economics "have a sense that this is the way life has always been. Because they've never been exposed to his- tory, they have no idea that these are recent attainments that come from a very specific economic system." Young people led by the Pursuit of the Cure by Star Parker Carson's innovation in homeless policy Warren's Social Security scam While still fresh in my memo- ry, I kept reminding myself of the highlights of my experiences dur- ing our trip to Alaska. There is so much to share, but it is not possible to write all of them down. So, the best we all do in life when we take vacations and R and Rs is to focus on what we enjoyed the most, and kind of push back the unpleasant things which are hard to avoid. A fter all, vacations are supposed to be the compilation of events we dream about and trea- sure and build upon, to balance the challenges in our lives. So, I'm often asked by my kids when I come back from vacations and trips, how things went and a list of what I enjoyed the most. Well, here are the things I trea- sured. The company of the four ladies who joined us on this journey. They each brought a special gift unique to their person- alities. One never met a stranger and could en- gage in conversations which made me feel there is indeed a beau- ty in the life of each human being we met. One was always able to prompt us on details on how to maneuver the complex set of instructions and programs we had to follow. One was always able to affirm that we're on the right track, and one was always able to give us feed- backs on what to observe and not miss. Rose always could point out which food was flavorful and where to find them. Me? I don't know. I just followed what the five ladies told me to do. I was outnumbered. • • • Going into a huge, I mean, a huge ship is an experience in itself. Knowing we will be mingling with 4,000 plus homo sapiens with dif- ferent traits and personalities was intimidating. Knowing I will be in the middle of an ocean where I will eat, sleep, watch and join ac- Ben Carson, the neurosur- geon-turned-secretary of Hous- ing and Urban Development, has written many books. One of them is called "You Have a Brain." The book is not about neu- rosurgery. The title is a quote from his single mother, who raised him and his brother and led them out of lives of poverty to successful careers. When one of the lads would confront a problem and turn to their mother, she would say, "You have a brain — use it." This simple bit of wisdom should be employed with greater frequency in public policy debate and discussion in our country. Carson is once again under at- tack by liberals, who are distort- ing perfectly legitimate obser- vations he made regarding con- cerns of admittance of transgen- der women into federally funded women's homeless shelters. The press headlines read that Carson made "hateful" remarks demeaning transgender individ- uals. Predictably, with no serious investigation into what Carson actually said or meant, a host of Democrats are calling for his resignation. Carson, in discussions with staff, said he was conveying concerns he heard from wom- en at homeless shelters regard- ing "big, hairy men" who "would come in and have to be accept- ed into the women's shelter even though it made the women in the facility very uncomfortable." Carson went on to clarify and said: "Our society is in danger when we pick one issue (such as gender identity) and say it does not matter how it impacts others because this one issue should override every other common- sense consideration. I think we have to look out for everyone, and we need to use our intel- lectual capabilities to find com- mon good rather than attempt- ing to always stir up controversy through identity politics." Part of the concern of Dem- ocrats is that the Department of Housing and Urban Devel- opment under Carson's leader- ship is looking to modify a 2012 Obama-era HUD rule, the Equal Access Rule, which bars feder- al housing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. But this is case in point for Carson's appeal to "use our in- tellectual capabilities to find common good," or, in his moth- er's words, "You have a brain — use it." Regardless of one's convic- tions about gender identity, it is reasonable to accept a rule against discrimination in feder- al housing. But discrimination is differ- ent from forcing women in home- less shelters to share all facilities with transgender women. It seems to me appropriate to the idea of "you have a brain — use it" to propose, as HUD has proposed, that "programs which permit single-sex or sex-segre- gated facilities (such as bath- rooms or temporary, emergency shelters... that require ... shared sleeping quarters or bathing fa- cilities)" take into consideration an individual's sex for the pur- pose of admitting the individual to the facility. According to one HUD staff- er, as reported in The Washing- ton Post, such a policy "prioritiz- es someone's discomfort over an- other person's right to shelter." I have news for this HUD staff- er. No one has a "right to shel- ter" at taxpayer expense. To the extent to which these facilities are provided, it is done under the good graces and consent of tax- paying American citizens, not because anyone has a "right" to these facilities. And Secretary Ben Carson is entirely and absolutely cor- Elizabeth Warren has a soak- the-rich plan for every problem in America. To make the math of any of these fiscal concoctions work, she's going to have find a lot more rich people to tax. The latest scheme is to increase Social Secu- rity monthly benefits for current and future retirees by about $200 a month from the current average of about $1,400 a month and tax- ing the top 1 percent. The Social Security trust fund is expected to be out of money in about 16 years, so this give-away would obviously accelerate the re- tirement program's financial de- mise. To make up for the shortfall, Ms. Warren would impose a new 14.8 percent payroll tax on Americans who earn more than $250,000 and extend the payroll tax to income on investments, such as dividend checks and capital gains from stocks and assets when they are sold. This taxing plan — on top of the annual wealth tax she sup- ports and her intention to cancel the Trump income tax rate cuts for those earning more than $250,000 would raise the highest tax rate on earnings from the current 37 per- cent to at least 52 percent. Income tax rates haven't been this high in almost 40 years. When rates were above 50 percent in the 1970s, rich people engaged in so much tax avoidance that the share of taxes paid by the top 1 percent was actually much lower than the share of taxes the rich pay today. This would erase almost all of the pro-growth gains of the Trump tax cuts. The raising of the capital gains tax from 23.8 percent today to about 40 percent (including the wealth tax) would be the largest tax increase on investment and saving in American history. It would double the rate from where it stood as recently as 2000, when Bill Clinton was president and low- ered the tax to 20 percent. Memo to progressive Democrats: The cut in the capital gains tax under Mr. Clinton led to the biggest increase in capital gains revenues in Ameri- can history and helped balance the budget. Suffice it to say that under this scheme, Social Security will go broke before a single Gen Xer or millennial ever sees a dime. But even more preposterous is the idea that tax rates levied on small business owners — most people in the top 1 percent own, operate or invest in small, start- up firms — can be raised to way above the rates imposed by oth- er rival nations without wrecking American competitiveness. Under Mr. Trump, the U.S. econ- omy is now growing faster than al- most any other industrial nation, and money is pouring into the United States as reflected by the strong dollar. Our tax rates under Ms. Warren (and Bernie Sand- ers and most of the rest of crew of Democratic presidential wan- nabes) would soar overnight from near the lowest to near the highest in the world. This makes as much sense as high-flying Texas with no income tax deciding to adopt the sky-high tax rates of Illinois, New York and New Jersey where people and jobs are leaving by the hundreds of thousands each year. This plan would destroy so ma- ny millions of jobs in America that Social Security payments for ma- ny workers would likely fall, rath- er than rise, because they will be unemployed longer and will have worked fewer hours. Perhaps the worst feature of the Warren plan is that it overt- ly turns Social Security into what is was never intended to be when FDR signed the program into law: an income redistribution welfare program. Social Security from when it was established in the 1930s as a national social insurance sys- tem has always been based on the idea that workers pay into the sys- tem to cover their monthly Social Security checks later in life when they retire. The plan has a pro- gressive benefit structure, mean- Pete Buttigieg, who happens to be the mayor of South Bend and a presidential candidate, is no stranger to controversy as a poli- tician or as a Christian theologian. "Mayor Pete" when he began his bid for the presidency addressed his homosexuality, which he wears as a badge, by attacking former In- diana Governor Mike Pence and those Christians who embrace the traditional teachings of the church on sexuality, calling this a "fanati- cal ideology." Buttigieg, defending his sexu- al orientation in religious terms, said at a LGBTQ gathering, "If me being gay was a choice, it was a choice that was made far, far above my pay grade. And that's the thing I wish that the Mike Pences of the world would understand: that if you've got a problem with whom I am, your problem is not with me. Your quarrel, sir, is with my cre- ator." What Mayor Pete thinks about God and sexual orientation is his own business; however, when he speaks as an authoritative theolo- gian, then he invites critique and repudiation. Over 1 billion Christians do not agree with Mayor Pete's assess- ment of the traditional Christian theology of sexuality and would dismiss him as a theological dolt. However, in a re- cent debate Mayor Pete, speaking again as a Christian theo- logian, made the claim that Jesus is, or would have been, Pro-Abortion. Let that set in. Many columnists took Mayor Pete to task for as- serting that "a lot of the scriptures says life begins with breath." T R Clancy wrote, "Buttigieg came in for some well-deserved ridicule from people who actually own Bi- bles. Mayor Pete was willing to ad- mit that others may interpret these verses differently because his re- al argument was that the only per- son's opinion that matters "is the woman making the decision." "This idea that 'the woman' alone (or more accurately, the mother alone) gets to decide her baby's life or death is the atheist Left's default position: Because there's no God to decree what is good or evil, there is no appeal out- side the individual's arbitrary will. (And because an unborn baby is too small to assert his/her will, who cares about him/ her?) By the way, Presi- dential candidate Ka- mala Harris who is also pro-abortion has publi- cally rebuked the Pres- ident and said, "A soci- ety is judged based on how it treats children." No cognitive dissidence observable here. The church has stood for life since the time of Jesus. To discard two millennium of Christian teach- ing and practice and claim abor- tion on demand is biblically sound has no word to describe the absur- dity of the claim or twisting of the scriptures. Whatever social issue the Chris- tian progressives wants to exco- riate, when challenged on their lack of theological foundations, they usually assert that the scrip- tures are ambiguous; the mind of God is unknowable, or Jesus nev- er mentioned it or condemned it [the practice]. The new progressives opine "that conservative [historical and Continued on page 11 Heritage Viewpoint By Stephen Moore