The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/1271843
B-10 Wednesday, July 22, 2020 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 Race for the Cure By Star Parker Lucid Moments By Bart Stinson Save emancipation monument, save ideals The Great Recession taught a so- bering lesson. The government can- not spend its way into prosperity. At best, stimulus measures are ineffec- tive. At worst, they can delay the re- covery and prolong financial hard- ship. As states across the country be- gin to reopen, lost jobs, business fail- ures, and scared consumers will in- crease the pressure on Congress to do more. Bipartisan infrastructure bills are already being floated. Some lawmakers are clamoring for even more stimulus payments for Ameri- cans. Congress is also debating a $1 trillion boost for state treasuries to keep government spending elevated in this misguided attempt to support the economy. Congress should not heed the si- ren song of stim- ulus spending. In- stead of search- ing for expensive ways to prop up the economy, lawmak- ers should pursue cheaper effective reforms that let the economy grow sus- tainably, which means removing ex- isting barriers. Jettisoning onerous regulations, licensing rules, and mandates will allow businesses and workers to adjust and pursue op- portunities as the economy restarts across the country. For stimulus spending to work, new government pro- grams must add to, rather than crowd out, private sec- tor jobs. That is not what happens. The evidence is clear that stimulus spending shrinks private sector jobs. A fter the 2009 infrastruc- ture stimulus, a survey of construction firms found that stimulus projects went to business- es that were already busy, and ma- ny of them had subsequently turned The debate now surrounding the Emancipation Monument that stands in Lincoln Park in Washington, D.C., is a critical discussion in which I believe all Americans of goodwill and those who want racial harmony should en- gage. The memorial shows a standing President Lincoln with the Emanci- pation Proclamation in his right hand and Archer Alexander, the last slave captured under the Fugitive Slave Act, at his left in a position that has created historical debate since the statue was erected in 1876. Those who are overturning and re- moving statues today have entered this debate not to participate in criti- cal discussion that art is meant to pro- voke but to remove history they don't like. They seem to want to rewrite his- tory and replace it with a history they prefer. But is there something we might call truth? Facts? Is history about search- ing for those facts and reporting them as they are? Or is history about Holly- wood, where we tell stories we want to hear that make us feel good? The dismantlers tell us this is a por- trait of white supremacy: the white president, he who holds the power, standing before the subservient black slave kneeling before him. But if Lincoln was about white su- premacy, someone should have told white supremacist John Wilkes Booth, who fired the shot into the president's head, assassinating him because he was a champion for the causes of lib- erty and racial equality. We can read the famous words of Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address: "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this conti- nent a new nation, conceived in Lib- erty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, test- ing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure." The estimated number of casual- ties in that Civil War about that great principle — "that all men are creat- ed equal" — is 750,000, nearly 70,000 more than all the casualties of all the other wars in which Americans have fought combined. Contrary to claims of the disman- tlers, the freed slave Archer Alexan- der is not kneeling in servitude before the president but rather, according to many serious voices in this historic debate, getting up and looking out to- ward his freedom. It is remarkable to read Alexander's story: how he was sold from one mas- ter to the next, all the while with his eyes toward freedom, exactly as he is depicted in the monument. Alexander escaped slavery from his fourth master and was about to be re- turned just as Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation. While a fugitive, he was harbored by William Greenleaf Eliot, a pastor and abolition- ist who wrote Alexander's biography and had presented a picture of Alexan- der to sculptor William Ball, the artist selected to design the memorial. The Emancipation Memorial, also known as the Freedmen's Memorial, was paid for by funds raised entirely by former slaves, as they wanted to hon- or President Lincoln. Now D.C. Rep. Eleanor Holmes Nor- ton is introducing legislation to Con- gress to remove the Emancipation Monument from Lincoln Park. She says, "The statue fails to note in any way how enslaved A frican Americans pushed for their own emancipation." But the memorial depicts this exact reality. It depicts a courageous Alex- ander who risked his life to be free. And it depicts a courageous Lincoln who paid for his convictions with his life. The Civil Rights movement was an- imated by the imagery of the Bible — of enslaved Israelites and the appeal to Pharaoh to "let my people go." But even here, the movement chose the history it preferred rather than the history that was. The Israelites who were liberated by their God were al- so sent into slavery by their God. And they were admonished by their God to not forget that slavery. The Freedmen's Monument cap- tures, deeply and truly, the American struggle of people of different back- Minority View By Walter E. Williams Heritage Viewpoint By Adam Michel Despicable behavior of today's academicians Why stimulus spending never works The Michigan State University ad- ministration pressured professor Ste- phen Hsu to resign from his position as vice president of research and in- novation because he touted research that found police are not more likely to shoot black Americans. The study found: "The race of a police officer did not predict the race of the citizen shot. In other words, black officers were just as likely to shoot black citi- zens as white officers were." For polit- ical reasons, the authors of the study sought its retraction. The U.S. Department of Educa- tion warned UCL A that it may impose fines for improperly and abusively targeting white professor Lt. Col. W. Ajax Peris for disciplinary action over his use of the n-word while reading to his class Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail." Boston University is consider- ing changing the name of its mas- cot Rhett because of his link to "Gone with the Wind." Al- most 4,000 Rutgers University students signed a petition to rename campus buildings Harden- bergh Hall, Frelin- ghuysen Hall and Milledoler Hall be- cause these men were slave owners. University of Ar- kansas students petitioned to remove a statue of J. William Fulbright be- cause he was a segregationist who opposed the Brown v. Board of Edu- cation that ruled against school seg- regation. The suppression of free speech and ideas by the elite is nothing new. It has a long ugly history. Galileo Gali- lei was a 17th-century Italian astronomer, physicist and en- gineer, sometimes called "fa- ther of modern physics." The Catholic Church and other sci- entists of his day believed that the Earth was the center of the universe. Galileo offered evi- dence that the Earth traveled around the sun — heliocen- trism. That made him "vehe- mently suspect of heresy" and was forced to recant and sentenced to formal imprisonment at the pleasure of the Inquisition and was later com- muted to house arrest for the rest of his life. Much of today's totalitarianism, promotion of hate and not to mention Continued on page 11 Continued on page 11 Continued on page 11 Continued on page 11 Continued on page 11 Continued on page 11 Rioting for its own sake When I was twelve, we moved into faculty housing on a large Job Corps facility that had taken over a vast de- commissioned Army base. My dad taught reading to high school drop- outs there from major East Coast cit- ies. It was part of President Johnson's "Great Society." I don't know how many Job Corps trainees were at our facility, but there were a lot, maybe in the thousands. They slept in the same painted wood- en Army barracks where Bob Dole and Jackie Robinson had trained in World War II. I don't remember any sense of cul- ture shock although I was a scraw- ny small-town white boy moving in a sea of young Black and Puerto Rican men. It was a great adventure learn- ing their masculine slang and profan- ity, and curating the vulgar restroom graffiti. We knew our cultural appro- priation was frowned upon, but we didn't know it had a name. Of course, we didn't invent cultural appropriation. Pat Boone had served up an unthreatening whitebread ver- sion of Little Richard's "Tutti Frutti." Elvis Presley made a career out of appropriating Black music and sala- cious, suggestive hip thrusts. My mom told me when I was a tod- dler, people at Nalley's Cafe in Fran- cisco used to give me a nickel to belt out "you ain't nothing but a hound dog," Elvis-style. We had no idea that was Big Mama Thornton's song, be- cause Elvis never mentioned her. I hope she got lots of royalties. The Beatles were so bold about lifting Black music that they even- tually were sued by Chuck Berry's music publisher. "Come Together" came out the year I started high school, and we all took John Len- non at his word that he wrote it. But Berry's lawyer noted the Beatles' song's melodic similarity to his cli- ent's song "You Can't Catch Me," and the fact that Lennon's song actually used some of Berry's lyrics, for cry- ing out loud. Plagiarism is theft, and it's not the exclusive domain of white entertain- ers. I've written previously about the plagiarism of Martin Luther King Jr. and Roots author Alex Haley. We're no longer as stratified and segregated as we were in the 1960s. It's hard to draw a definitive line be- tween Black and white culture any- more, and therefore more difficult to identify cultural appropriation. It doesn't seem odd anymore to see white athletes giving one another high fives, or to see Black teenagers skateboarding. But the last frontier seems to be appropriating grievances. At first glance, the massive turnout of woke white Millennials at anti-racist demonstrations seemed heartwarm- ing display of transracial solidarity. Maybe this generation of Americans could finally put racism behind us. But on closer examination, a lot of these white demonstrators appear to have come out for the fun. A Black police officer in Portland told one of my friends that he was usually able to engage young Black protesters in re- spectful conversation until they were interrupted by shrieking white Left- ists who brought the conversation to a halt with name-calling and accusa- tions, and often with racial epithets. Let's be clear: rioting is fun. It's an adrenaline rush. We had one at the Job Corps center. What could be more intoxicating for the criminally inclined than to defy authority, de- stroy adults' property, menace the police, and maybe take home a big- screen souvenir to remember the ri- ot by? I remember looking into the sweaty faces in our Job Corps riot. They were similar to the faces of a football team after a touchdown, but happier, more exultant. What I was witnessing was ecstasy. And so when I hear urban riots described as a product of "black rage," I am skep- tical. Most looters and arsonists will have very fond memories of their ri- ot. It's not surprising that unaccom- plished young whites, former latch- key kids whom nobody has ever tak- en seriously, covet the grievances that enoble and entitle Black victims. Grievances they believe are a blank check. The right to bellow accusa- tions at detested adult authority fig- ures, to give free unchallenged rein to your darkest impulses, to hush and intimidate your critics? That's irre- sistible to people of their neglected character. Perhaps it was inevitable that This past week has been both in- teresting and challenging. We had four girl grandkids – two sets of sis- ters – to host, entertain and feed. They are truly a great source of dis- traction and joy, especially during these difficult distancing mandates. As many other grandparents had provided brief care for their grand- children, the comments I often hear are, "It's nice to have them around but it is a lot nicer to send them back," is true. I discovered a few more things about girl psychology versus male psychology. Our girl grandkids are ages 10, 6 and two are 4. It is true, different kids have different per- sonalities. Let me give some exam- ples. I noticed that girls tend to talk lots, and they do a lot of pretend play school and kitchen activities. They are constantly in search of some- thing to munch on, and they love to play with doll toys. One time they asked for sandbox- es which I thought was not unusu- al, but when they started to pretend they were cooking and baking and us- ing plates and tea cups, I understood the contrast with the male gender kids. When we keep my male grand- kids, they tend to talk more about bikes, AT Vs, fishing, walking trails, and competitive sports. They do not exhibit much behavior of talking constantly, or running and shriek- ing frequently. Boys tend to exhibit more competitive endeavors and show their strength and daring. The boys tend to eat but they are not in constant search for snacks. They like bigger meals spaced apart. I can go on and on contrasting the two sets of genders but space would not allow me to do that. • • • There are so many bless- ings we need to recognize about liv- ing in a smaller community and be- ing blessed with less dense popula- tion. I'd like to name a few. We have Hornady Park which has the Kiefer Splash Park and large playgrounds My Point of View By Dr. H. K. Fenol, Jr., M.D. Interesting and challenging week Points to Ponder By Rev. Ford Bond Stand your ground We are hearing a lot about "Stand Your Ground" lately. The phrase "Stand Your Ground" has come to re- fer to laws that protect those who use lethal force in self-defense. However, "Stand Your Ground" does have a noble meaning. It is about standing up for your principles; not backing down from your moral com- mitments and remaining firm in your righteous convictions. Christians are called to stand their ground in holiness, righteousness, and godly living. The Hebrew writer reminds us of the importance of godly living; "Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; with- out holiness no one will see the Lord." Living holy and seeking righteous- ness is not a suggestion, or even a good idea. It is the life of a disciple! We are to stand our ground as oth- er men and women of faith have across time, from Abraham to Paul, and beyond. Jeremiah stood his ground and was thrown into a muddy well; more than once he was threatened with death. This is the ground we are to stand on. This is what we are to claim, pro- tect, and love. Our God is above all gods and we will not worship others! The Old World Amish is a modern example of a Christian people stand- ing their ground. The Amish are not trying to recapture or maintain a lifestyle rooted in an era long past, but are stay- ing true to God among secu- lar influences. The Amish do not shun innovations. They examine how the advancement will af- fect their walk with God and their way of life. The life and holiness of the community is why they stand their ground on a tried-and-true way of life. To stand one's ground means to be ready to defend and attack. Paul wrote