The Press-Dispatch
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D-4 Wednesday, December 16, 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 Williams: Prophet of freedom Sometimes, the legacy of great men is that the world doesn't real- ize how great they were until they are gone. This might be the case with Dr. Walter E. Williams. Dr. Williams passed away last week. He was the John M. Olin dis- tinguished professor of economics at George Mason University, where, for six years, he served as chairman of the economics department. He was a prolific author and columnist (writ- ing for Creators, which also syndi- cates my column). And he was a dear friend. An A frican American who grew up poor in Philadelphia, he was raised by a single mother and, at one time, drove a cab. He became hooked on economics when he took his first courses on the subject and went on to earn his doc- torate at the University of California, Los Angeles. Williams became one of the na- tion's most articulate advocates of American-style liberty and Ameri- can-style capitalism. He was one A f- rican American who truly believed in and wanted what the civil rights movement claimed as its goal: real freedom for all. He spoke about "the morality of markets." He put it this way in one interview: "The areas that we have the greatest satisfaction or the few- est complaints are places like the supermarket or the clothing store, or in computers or cell phones. And what's the motivation of the produc- ers? It's for profit. But look at the ar- eas where we are dissatisfied — it's public education, it's the city sanita- tion department, it's the public trans- portation, it's the motor vehicles de- partment. Look at the stated motiva- tion in these areas: it's where there is caring but where there is no prof- it motive." The profit motive, he continued, "forces the producer to try to find what people want, and to produce what they want. At the same time, it forces them to provide human wants in a way that economizes on the us- age of scarce resources." Government, on the other hand, is about "coercion," Williams ex- plained. The country's founders un- derstood that there are legitimate functions of government but limited it through the Constitution "because they recognized that the potential for abuse was so great." Walter Williams saw freedom as the solution and government as the problem. This put him at odds with most black politicians, who, despite allegedly having the civil rights movement's goal of freedom, saw in- creasingly more government and po- litical coercion as the means for im- proving the lot of black Americans. The result has been more politici- zation of race, rather than less. The civil rights movement was supposed to be about purging racism and raising human dignity. But there is probably at least as much rhetoric and public obsession about race to- day as ever. Ironic is that, today, the enthusi- asm for the politicization of race may be coming more from white liberals than from young blacks. The Wall Street Journal recent- ly reported on the increasing num- ber of startups founded by young black entrepreneurs, who are turn- ing to venture capitalists for funding. It quotes black entrepreneur Joseph Heller, founder of a startup that "con- nects custom-merchandise business- es with manufacturers in China." "I think access to capital and entre- preneurship is the next civil-rights movement," notes Heller. "If you think about every issue of inequality today, it all stems from economic inequality," says Heller. "You could talk about policing and things like that, but really that's an economic issue too. And so the on- ly way you're really going to address that is through entrepreneurship." According to the ProjectDiane survey, reports the Journal, as of this year, "female Black and Latina found- ers ... have raised a cumulative $ 3.1 billion — more than triple the $1 bil- lion they had raised as of 2018." It's what Walter Williams called the "morality of the marketplace" — the allocation of resources driven by freedom, merit, creativity and excel- Continued on page 5 Continued on page 5 Continued on page 5 I am quite certain that practical- ly everyone who has a cell phone, an iPad, a computer or an electronic device of some sort has been view- ing these gizmos many times during the day. It is amazing what I hear from my grandson, Andrew, about what he has been seeing around his circle of schoolmates and friends. He told me that some of his friends have built programs for games, postings, com- municating, e-learning, purchasing, commerce, etc. Some have built their devices costing hundreds to thou- sands of dollars, spending hours and hours focused on these activi- ties. Some have even earned hefty sums of money when they post their ideas or activities. I asked him how that happens. He said if you get millions of views or hits when you post a program like on Youtube, you may get a one- to three-tenths of one cent return for each item viewed, and if you multi- ply that "hit" in super-huge numbers, it can add up. Now I am not too knowledge- able about how the world of posting works, but I follow postings by an au- to mechanic who rates vehicles, ad- vises which vehicles are good, which vehicles are poorly made, how to repair mechanical prob- lems, what kind of unusual problems he has been asked to solve, and many other items of inter- est. He said views on his program have reached over a bil- lion mark worldwide, and if he got a fraction of a cent reward each view, that has made him a millionaire now. Now I truly don't understand how all these things work and I have to do more research on this matter, but I believe him. He says he has no PhD on anything, just a mechanic with 52 years of experience and a creative style of communicating. He truly is entertaining and can hold you cap- tive especially if you love cars and different types of vehicles. Never in my life could I imagine experiencing this era of the electron- ic world of communication. I know a lot of good things have come out of this technology, like enjoying fast and accurate means of communica- tions, saving time, effort and being efficient. Wholesome socialization has also been a big plus. But also, given the dark side of human frailty, bad things have come out of it as well. It has several draw- backs, such as loss of person- al contact through isolation, scams, spam mail, addiction, bullying and other emotional mental health issues. We have to be very careful and wise in using mod- ern technology. • • • I was listening to a homily deliv- ered in our Church and asked our priest to share it with me. Here it is: "A microphone can make a weak voice louder than the world's stron- gest voice. A bicycle can make a slow person faster than the world's fastest runner. In the same way, God's king- dom can make an insignificant per- son greater than the world's greatest person. But it is not enough to have a microphone. We must speak into it. It My Point of View By H. K. Fenol, Jr., M.D. A billion hits Heritage Viewpoint By David R. Burton Putin is winning Russia's hybrid war against America Continued on page 5 Continued on page 5 Minority View By Walter Williams Costs must be weighed against benefits The joy of Advent in the hard times As we get closer and closer to Christmas, the joy of the season sur- rounds us. It's there in our Christ- mas carols, on our cards, and decora- tions. Who doesn't like to hear about joy this time of year? As we light our candles, we boldly proclaim our joy in our words, in our prayers, and in our songs. Christmas is almost here, and we are joyful. But, what about those times when joy feels hard to reach? What do we say then? Most people have heard Elvis sing Blue Christmas. What a drag! It is without a doubt that more than one family will have a Blue Christ- mas because of COVID! As Chris- tians we cannot deny there is hard- ship and suffering around the globe; to ignore suffering is not a legitimate response. Jesus told us to bind up the brokenhearted and stay near those who suffer. Suffering is messy. We tend to gloss over the negatives and focus instead on brighter or happy sto- ries and push those who are not joy- ful out of our circle of friends. How- ever, let each of us remember life is about commonly shared stories—the names and dates may be different, but the stories are the same. Espe- cially at Christmas we need listen to those in pain and suffering because there are times we are called upon to listen to stories of pain. Many churches have a Blue Christ- mas service. This service often is ob- served on December 21st, the lon- gest night of the year. We know that hard things happen, but to purpose- ly make room for a Blue Christmas when we are "suppose" to be expe- riencing joy seems to counter the theme of Advent. However, all is not lost. Advent is a time in which we point to hope in Christ. Paul wrote to the church at Philippi, "Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice! Let your gen- tleness be known to all men. The Lord is at hand. Be anxious for noth- ing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God…" This passage of scripture doesn't promise easy lives, or a life without pain. But it does promise the disciple that the injuries of life do not have the last word. Each disciple stands in the real world, at the junction of where pain and hope meet, and yearns for some- thing better. We long for joy and sing, "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel," ask- ing the Lord to be with us. The joy that comes with Christ is there in the best of times, but it can still be accessed when times are hard. Being joyful in hard times does not ignore the pain of life, it signals your trust is in Christ to reverse the reversals! John wrote in his gospel: "The light shines in darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." In other words, Christ is the light of the world, and the worst that the world can do is still not enough to extinguish that light. And if that light cannot be extinguished, then neither can that joy. The Joy of Advent began long be- fore Bethlehem. The prophet Isa- iah wrote, I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God; For He has clothed me with the garments of salvation, He has cov- ered me with the robe of righteous- ness, as a bridegroom decks him- self with ornaments, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. For as the earth brings forth its bud, as the garden causes the things that are sown in it to spring forth, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations." Christians possess the Joy of the Lord and are called to be witnesses to the light and to share and spread the joy that the light brings. The Joy of Christ is more than just a feeling. Joy is a way of living as peo- ple following the light of Christ into the world. One cannot just claim joy; living the Joy of Christ is an act of faith, and living with that joy is a rev- olutionary act to a world that could use a little joy right now. God's gift of joy was not a baby to be seen as dispossessed lying in a manger of straw living as an animal and caged as a threat, but was given While conventional military con- flicts between large powers appear to be out of fashion—along with for- mal declarations of war—Russia has been waging a silent, "hybrid war" against the U.S. for years. Russian President Vladimir Putin's goal: to influence American minds. Christopher Krebs, the recent- ly fired director of the U.S. Cyber- security and Infrastructure Securi- ty Agency (CISA), stated after Elec- tion Day that there was "no evidence any foreign adversary was capable of preventing Americans from voting or changing vote tallies." He missed the point. The real issue is not that our enemies are trying to prevent Amer- icans from voting—though that is certainly of concern. Putin is less likely to revel in a victory by either presidential candidate than to cele- brate the fact that election results are being disputed in many states, with legal challenges brought before judg- es for resolution. Based on 2016 evidence, Russian attempts to interfere with voter-reg- istration lists and to promote voter fraud cannot be discount- ed. But in the 2020 presidential elec- tion, Putin's prima- ry aim was neither to hurt Biden, nor to aid Trump. We can ascertain to- day that his prima- ry goal was to po- larize the country, and to sow distrust and social cha- os to undermine the confidence of Americans in each other and in their democratic process. A polarized, dis- united America will help Putin end American dominance of a unipo- lar world and reestablish Russia as a global power. Russian operatives have been using old Soviet strategies to exploit racial division and stir pro- tests in the U.S. by peddling disin- formation about America's racial in- justices. The Kremlin has been suc- cessful in infiltrating, for example, both white nation- alist and Black Lives Matter groups. Within such groups, Russia pushes inflammato- ry rhetoric, causing many Republicans and Democrats to question the fundamental structure of and confidence in their democratic institu- tions. The response from the Justice Department and U.S. law-enforcement officials has been narrow in scope; thus far, it's amounted to imposing sanctions on four known Russian agents for their alleged election-tampering ef- forts, and charging an employee of a Russian troll factory known as the "Internet Research Agency" with "criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States" (related to election Editor's note: This is the final col- umn Walter Williams wrote before he died last week. One of the first lessons in an eco- nomics class is every action has a cost. That is in stark contrast to les- sons in the political arena where pol- iticians virtually ignore cost and talk about benefits and free stuff. If we look only at the benefits of an action, policy or program, then we will do anything because there is a benefit to any action, policy or program. Think about one simple exam- ple. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that 36,096 Americans lost their lives in motor vehicle traffic crash- es in 2019. Virtually all those lives could have been saved if we had a 5 MPH speed limit. The huge benefit of a 5 MPH speed limit is that those 36,000 -plus Americans would have been with us instead of lost in high- way carnage. Fortunately, we look at the costs of having a 5 MPH speed limit and rightly conclude that sav- ing those 36,000 -plus lives are not worth the costs and inconvenience. Most of us find it too callous, when talking about life, to explicitly weigh costs against bene- fits. We simply say that a 5 MPH speed limit would be im- practical. What about the benefits and costs of dealing with the COVID-19 pan- demic? Much of the medical profession and politi- cians say that lockdowns, social dis- tancing and mask-wearing are the solutions. CDC data on death rates show if one is under 35, the chanc- es of dying from COVID-19 is much lower than that of being in a bicycle accident. Should we lockdown bicy- cles? Dr. Martin Kulldorff, profes- sor of medicine at Harvard Univer- sity, biostatistician and epidemiolo- gist, Dr. Sunetra Gupta, professor at Oxford University and an epidemi- ologist with expertise in immunolo- gy, and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, profes- sor at Stanford University Medical School, a physician and epide- miologist were the initiators of the Great Barrington Dec- laration. More than 50,000 scientists and doctors, as well as more than 682,000 ordinary people, have signed the Great Barrington Decla- ration opposing a second COVID-19 lockdown because they see it doing much more harm than good. Efforts to keep very young from getting COVID-19, given most will not even realize they have it or will suffer only mild symptoms, may be counterproductive in that it delays the point where a country has herd immunity. According to the CDC, COVID-19 deaths in young people (from babies to college students) are almost nonexistent. The first age group to provide a substantial contri- bution to the death toll is 45 -54 years, who contribute nearly 5% of all coro- ADVENT