The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/1293358
B-8 Wednesday, September 30, 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 Points to Ponder By Rev. Ford Bond Supreme Court fight is about life and death Chuck Schumer, Senate minority leader, says, "Our No. 1 goal must be to communicate the stakes of this Supreme Court fight to the Ameri- can people." He continued, "nothing is off the table." Nothing? Not even violence? A fter the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavana- ugh, members of the Trump adminis- tration were being assaulted in pub- lic spaces, in restaurants. Sen. Schumer is right that the American people must know what's at stake. Will we have a culture of life and ci- vility, or a culture of death, violence and chaos? The abortion rate in Schumer's own New York state stands the high- est in the nation. Among black wom- en in New York City, according to the Wall Street Journal, "thousands more black babies are aborted each year than born alive." The last Democratic president, Barack Obama, was the first sitting president to address Planned Parent- hood, provider of hundreds of thou- sands of abortions each year, and concluded by saying: "Thank you, Planned Parenthood. God bless you." The A ffordable Care Act, the signature legislation of President Obama and the Democratic Party, required employers to provide free abortifacients, abortion-inducing drugs, to employees. Democrats want a Supreme Court justice who sees wanton destruction of human life in the womb as "wom- en's health." We should appreciate the broad- er implications of the abortion is- sue. When we are talking about life and death, we are talking about life's meaning and how that plays out in our culture. The whole nation went into up- heaval when the video showing the horrible murder of George Floyd, suffocated under the knee of a po- liceman, went viral. Why was the reaction so intense? Life and death were there to see in front of our eyes. The visual display of a life senselessly snuffed out was more than anyone could bear. It is exactly what happens when a mother sees the ultrasound of the unborn child growing in her womb. I do not believe anything has strengthened the pro-life movement like ultrasound. John Newton, the repentant slave trader, wrote the haunting hymn "Amazing Grace" to express his grief about his sinful behavior. The hymn concludes with the refrain "Was blind, but now I see." The legalization of abortion on de- mand in America in 1973 amounted to a puncture in our nation's soul. We were blind. We must work hard so that we will see again. We have been watching the inex- orable unraveling of the social and cultural fabric of our nation since the Roe v. Wade decision, since we decid- ed to devalue life. In 1960, 72 % of American adults over 18 were married. Today, it is 50 % . In 1970, about 11% of births were to unwed mothers. Today, it exceeds 40 % . Birthrates are at an all-time low and well below what is needed for our population to grow. In a recent Pew Research survey, only 16 % of men and 17% of women said that marriage is "essential for a ... fulfilling life." Only 16 % of men and 22 % of women said having children is "essential for a ... fulfilling life." This compared with 57% of men and 46 % of women who said "having a job or career they enjoy" is essential. As we dismiss our Creator from our public spaces, as we exchange love and meaning for crass materi- alism, we exchange a culture of life for a culture of death. And by doing so, we put the future of our nation in jeopardy. Fortunately, President Don- ald Trump understands what is at stake. His No. 1 goal, like that of Sen. Schumer, is "to communicate the stakes of this Supreme Court fight to the American people." Due to the diligence of this presi- dent and the Republican Senate, we Continued on page 9 Continued on page 9 Continued on page 9 Let's move the clock back to 1973. I was in Toronto, Canada , undergo- ing my transplantation into the West- ern world, from the culture of the east where I grew up and where I spent 26 years of my life. So I found myself immersed into a world of im- migrants from nations such as Bul- garia, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia (now Croatia), Ukraine, Greece, India, China, Korea, Guy- ana, Germany, Egypt, United King- dom (England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales), South A frica, etc. Let me focus on the group of phy- sicians who migrated from the East- ern block ruled by the Soviet Union at that time. They left their respec- tive countries to seek a different life and they were hoping for a bet- ter future. Canada at that time wide- ly opened their doors to the world because the Canadian government felt that they needed more citizens, since they had a vast land area, big- ger than the USA but they only had about 17 million (currently I think 39 million) citizens. They felt if the economy was to grow, they needed immigrants who would purchase houses, cars, build- ings, land, appliances, and all con- ceivable goods that would stimu- late the economy. The healthcare system also needed more physicians, and I was fortunate enough to be ac- cepted into one of their fine residency programs. That's where I got an in- sight into what my colleagues from the communist/socialist countries shared with the rest of us. They were brought up from societies and gov- ernments different from where we had come from. As a keen observ- er of what each one brought into the mix, I took note of the characters of each one of us in the group. When you live and work closely with dif- ferent people in residency programs for a year, you can draw some conclu- sions about their values, their skills and their biases. I was fascinated by what I observed. • • • These comments and statements are my own personal observations and I try not to color them with un- fair biases. I saw and heard what my colleagues from these com- munist and socialist coun- tries expressed. It is hard to forget their comments. For instance, they were fas- cinated by simple things like how we had so much dispos- able items used. They were surprised needles would be thrown away after one use. They would comment that they would sterilize glass syringes and needles for reuse because their supply was limited. They said in the hospitals they where worked, they recycled gloves and catheters after they were cleaned a certain way. They were fascinated by the amount of disposable gowns we used after procedures. They were amazed at the amount of modern technolo- gy and machines used for diagnoses and treatments. So, why am I telling this? Because I think the world they came from had no advancement in technology and research due of lack of competition, free enterprise, or in- My Point of View By H. K. Fenol, Jr., M.D. Solzhenitsyn spoke the truth Heritage Viewpoint By Lee Edwards We need a new Fusionism Continued on page 9 Continued on page 9 Minority View By Walter E. Williams Language and thought Giving bad advice Hallucinogenic and mood-altering substances have been known to man- kind since antiquity: alcohol, peyote, henbane, mushrooms, poppy, night- shade, cannabis, dreamfish, blue lo- tus, and mad honey just to name a few. That being said, there is no known civilization that encouraged the rec- reational use of hallucinogens. Ma- ny of these substances were cultur- ally restricted to be used by Sham- mas, Oracles, and medicine men as a means to discern the future. Individ- uals and a civilization cannot prosper and grow when a large segment of its population seeks to sustain a state of inebriation or mental intoxication. There is a national trend to decrim- inalize the recreational use of mari- juana, and I soon suspect that Con- gress will enact legislation removing criminal penalties and place a feder- al excise tax upon all sales. Currently, 12 states have fully de- criminalized the use of marijuana, 21 states allow for medical use, five states allow for CBD oil use, with on- ly 12 states still criminalizing its use. Indiana is surrounded on all sides by states that allow for the use of marijuana; though, it does allow for the use of CBD oil. However, as you can see by the statistics, the pendu- lum is swinging towards federal le- galization, and Indiana will decrim- inalize soon. Our elected government and ex- perts are sending a mixed message. Parents teach their children that choices have consequences, and some consequences cannot be un- done. Many states promote [legal] gam- bling, alcohol, and drugs, but few if any have any real program to dis- suade or warn the participants that addiction can occur with dire conse- quences. Why? Because there are massive taxes to be made. But this is a side note. What the citizenry is told is if they "have a drinking or gambling problem, seek help," and here is a phone number. But what is left unsaid is the addicted has to pay for his/her treatment. Choices have consequences. The proverb writer understood this centuries ago: "Where there is no guidance the people fall, but in an abundance of counselors there is victory." Christianity has been banished from politics, and our nation no lon- ger has an absolute moral founda- tion; our national consciousness is adrift, and we are immersed amongst competing voices. I ran across one of those "com- peting voices" recently in an article "I Am a Sinner," which perked my cu- riosity. The blog begins, "The most painful thing about dying is not hav- ing lived. Like the narrow stem on a funnel, the mind strangles the soul, Consciousness (God) fills our soul but the mind reduces Divine Truth to a trickle. We are in essence, asleep. When they work, cannabis edibles break off the base and allow Divine Truth (Reality) to fill our being." The writer portrays himself as a spiritual person, but not in the typ- ical sense of religious affiliation. Though he readily enjoys the teach- ings of Christ, he is not a Christian; he is more of a cultural philosopher. He wrote [I abridge], "Last night I got high and Divine Consciousness flowed into my being. Thanks to can- nabis turning on the light, I am confi- dent I can vastly improve my life. It's much easier to change oneself than to change the world. We cannot hear God if we do not listen. A God-forsak- en species, we must return to Real- ity or perish. Cannabis can show us the way to God. And God can show us how to resist Satan and his min- ions. Just loving Him is an excellent start. It drives Satanists crazy, espe- cially if you mention Jesus." What a mishmash of nonsense. Dr. Sigmund Freud said dreams were the "Royal Road" to the uncon- sciousness; now we are told marijua- na opens the mind to God. We have two competing philoso- phies about life. Jesus taught seek- ing God requires one to walk upon a narrow path. It may seem the nar- row path is restrictive, but as one pro- gresses, it opens wide and true free- dom and life everlasting emerges. The other path is wide that leads to mind altering experiences, which the ancients left to the Shammas. The wide path leads away from God because the purpose of getting high Conservatism is almost as divided as America, split between divergent brands that range from traditional and social conservatism to libertar- ian and constitutional conservatism. But there is no reason to despair— conservatives have never marched in lockstep. Just as they oppose central- ized economic planning, so do they oppose centralized political plan- ning. The conservative movement is a loosely bound movement made up of, in Morton Blackwell's words, "ac- tivists, scholars, donors, and organi- zational entrepreneurs held togeth- er by … shared philosophy, shared enemies, and shared experiences." And it is a movement that comes together when confronted with a common foe. Such was the case in the 1960s when National Review ed- itor Frank Meyer proposed a synthe- sis of the traditionalist and libertari- an strains of conservatism that came to be called "fusionism." The core principle of fusionism is that "the freedom of the person [is] the central and primary end of polit- ical society." To Meyer, man was a rational autonomous individual, and freedom was the essence of his be- ing, indispensable to his pursuit of happiness. Yet Meyer also insisted that modern Amer- ican conservatism was not classical lib- eralism, which had been weakened by utilitarianism and secularism. Con- servatives sought to save the Christian understanding of "the nature and des- tiny of man." Meyer insisted he was not creating anything new, but articu- lating an already existing conser- vative consensus—"the consensus forged so brilliantly by the Found- ing Fathers" with the U.S. Constitu- tion. The clear danger that existed and united traditionalists and liber- tarians then and through the 1980s was the Soviet Union and its vow to communize the world. Which brings us to the last issue of The American Conservative that asks, "What Is American Conserva- tism? " in the Trump era. It provides answers from 20 -some representa- tives of the New Right, the Old Right, and the Just Right. While a couple of contributors dismiss conservatism as a collection of "bizarre little cults" that are "no longer ca- pable of anything but reflex- ive spasms" and declare that "American conservatism…is a failure," the majority prefer to concentrate on how to re- juvenate conservatism. Their proposals constitute a con- sensus that now is the time for the forging of a New Fu- sionism. Although he does not use the word, the American Enterprise In- stitute scholar Yuval Levin opens the door into the world of fusionism. He concedes that the market economy is critical to a free society but insists that it is "dangerously inadequate" as a means to the end of a com- mon good. Ultimately, Levin says, the present passionate debates be- tween conservatives are about "how best to apply a complex view of the human person to the politics of a free nation." Daniel McCarthy, editor of the Seventeenth-century poet and in- tellect John Milton predicted, "When language in common use in any coun- try becomes irregular and depraved, it is followed by their ruin and degra- dation." Gore Vidal, his 20th-centu- ry intellectual successor, elaborated saying: "As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to il- luminate." Sloppy language permits people to get away with speaking and doing all manner of destructive non- sense without being challenged. Let's look at the concept of "white privilege," the notion that white peo- ple have benefited in American his- tory relative to, and at the expense of, "people of color." It appears to be utter nonsense to suggest that poor and destitute Appalachian whites have white privilege. How can one tell if a person has white privilege? One imagines that the academic elite, who coined the term, refer to whites of a certain socioeconomic status such as living in the suburbs with the privilege of high-income ameni- ties. But here is a question: Do Ni- gerians in the U.S. have white priv- ilege? As reported by the New York Post this summer, 17% of all Nigeri- ans in this coun- try hold master's degrees, 4% hold a doctorate and 37% hold a bachelor's degree, according to the U.S. Cen- sus Bureau's 2006 American Com- munity Survey. By contrast, 19 % of whites have a bach- elor's degree, 8 % have master's de- grees and 1% have doctorates. What about slavery? Colleges teach our young people that the U.S. became rich on the backs of free black labor. That is utter nonsense. Slavery does not have a very good record of producing wealth. Think about it. Slavery was all over the South and outlawed in most of the North. I doubt that anyone would claim that the antebellum South was rich, and the slave-starved North was poor. The truth is just the opposite. In fact, the poorest states and regions of our country were places where slav- ery flourished: Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, while the richest states and regions were those where slavery was outlawed: Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Massa- chusetts. Speaking of holding peo- ple accountable for slavery, there is no way that Europe- ans could have captured mil- lions of A fricans. They had A f- rican and Arab help. There would not have been much black slavery in the U.S., and the western hemisphere in general, without A fricans exchang- ing other A fricans to European slave traders at the coast for guns, mirrors, cloths, foreign alcoholic beverages and gold dust. Congressional Dem- ocratic lawmakers have called for a commission to study reparations, but I have not heard calls to hold the true perpetrators of American slavery ac- countable. Should we demand that congressional Democrats haul rep-