The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/1396495
My D-4 Wednesday, July 28, 2021 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 The perverse agenda of Black Lives Matter Since the new wave of race conscious- ness that has been sweeping our coun- try, precipitated by the graphic video of the killing of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin, something very strange has happened. Somehow, what is perceived as a problem has become widely understood to be the solution. And it is endanger- ing our country. If there remain citizens in America who, because of race or any other rea- son, are deprived of the benefits and protections of a free society, we should work to bring those benefits of freedom to them. The answer is not to abandon the principles that make us a free country. But this is what is happening. Those who are the loudest and most aggres- sive about what is supposedly wrong don't want a free country. Their com- plaint is not about absence of freedom, but who has power and who will be in charge and running the show. Nothing could make this clearer than the recent bizarre statement of Black Lives Matter about the current civil un- rest in Cuba. Cuba is an unfree country. It has been run by communists for years. And, like all countries that are run by commu- nists, the people there live deprived and oppressed. This is not rhetoric. This is fact. Freedom House in Washington, D.C., is a nonpartisan organization that rates all the nations in the world according to how free they are. They rate nations ac- cording to political rights and civil lib- erties. Cuba ranks as one of the world's least free countries. Out of a possible score of 100, Cuba scores 13. In political rights, out of a top score of 40, Cuba gets a 1. On civil liberties, out of a possible score of 60, Cuba scores 12. Yet, Black Lives Matters writes, "The people of Cuba are being punished by the U.S. government because the coun- try has maintained its commitment to sovereignty and self-determination." As the information from Freedom House shows, the only sovereignty and self-determination that exists in Cuba is in the hands of the communist despots who run the place. Yet, in the opinion of Black Lives Mat- ter, the suffering of the Cuban people is not due to the despots running Cuba, who deprive them of their freedom, but it's caused by the free country, the USA, that is its nearby neighbor to the north. We don't see many Americans flee- ing to live in Cuba. But, per the Pew Research Center, there are over 2 mil- lion Cuban Americans who left Cuba, or whose family left Cuba, to come to live in a country that is free. Moreover, per a survey done by Pew in 2020, 58 % of Cuban Americans identi- fy as, or lean toward, Republicans, com- pared with 38 % who identify as, or lean toward, Democrats. Cuban Americans know what oppres- sion is about, and it's why they care so much about being free Americans. "Since 1962," says Black Lives Mat- ter, "the United States has forced pain and suffering on the people of Cuba by cutting off food, medicine and supplies." Yes, the United States maintains an economic embargo on Cuba. Why should our nation provide sources of revenue that will only go into the cof- fers of the communists who control ev- erything? But, as The Wall Street Jour- nal's Mary O'Grady points out, contrary to BLM's distortions, "food and med- icine are exempt" from this embargo. The one thing that Black Lives Mat- ter gets right is that almost a third of Cu- bans are Black and brown. Yet, some- how, Black Lives Matter thinks they will enhance the lives of these people of col- or by supporting oppressors rather than bringing them more freedom. And, indeed, Black Lives Matter has the same anti-freedom agenda in our country. The question is why this perverse group has so much credibility and pow- er? What is wrong with our political and business leaders that support these en- emies of human freedom? Star Parker is president of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education and host of the weekly television show "Cure America with Star Parker." Woke language Have you noticed how our lan- guage is changing? At a congressional hearing on "Birthing While Black," nearly every politician used the words "birthing people" instead of "women" or "moth- ers." Asked why, Shalanda Young, President Joe Biden's budget direc- tor, said, "Our language needs to be more inclusive." Activists have also changed "equality" to "equity" and "affirma- tive action" to "diversity." The Associated Press no longer uses "mistress." It tells reporters to use "companion, friend or lover." Worse, certain speech is now la- beled "violence." Calling a transgender woman a man is "an act of violence," says transgender actress Laverne Cox. Last week, the American Booksell- ers Association apologized for pro- moting a book on gender dysphoria after activists called it "anti-trans." The book is hardly "anti-trans." The Economist and the Times of London called it one of the best books of the year. But the Booksellers Associa- tion actually groveled, calling pro- moting the book "violent." Tim Sandefur of the Goldwater Institute says it's dangerous to call words violence. "The only way human beings can deal with one another is through lan- guage, discussion, debate," he says in my new video. "If we say that that's violence, then the only way for us to relate to one another is through pow- er." I push back. "You're white. Why should anybody listen to you about this? " "Because what I say has, or doesn't have, merit on its own," he replies. "A big problem with the social justice movement is the idea that people's mindset is controlled by their skin color. That may be called 'anti-rac- ism' today, but it's just plain old-fash- ioned racism." Linguist John McWhorter, author of the forthcoming book "Woke Rac- ism," adds, "It can be really hard for us to talk to each other, because we don't know what the words we're us- ing mean." "The idea is, wherever there are white and black disparities, we're supposed to call that phenomenon 'racism,'" says McWhorter. "It nev- er fully holds together." "Latinx" is another new term cre- ated by activists. And yet, says Sandefur, "'Latino' originated as a reaction led by His- panic people! They chose the word Latino or Latina. And now here's a largely white, middle-class move- ment of social justice activists telling other people, 'No, no, you can't make distinctions in gender that way.'" "Largely white? " I ask. "The social justice movement in general is a largely white, upper-mid- dle-class, college-educated move- ment," he replies. "You hardly find anybody in the Hispanic community who prefers the term 'Latinx.'" He's right. Only 4% of Hispanics prefer the term. It's hard to keep up with what's OK and what's forbidden. Students at the University of Illi- nois-Chicago recently became upset because law professor Jason Kilborn included the N word, with only the first letter shown, in an exam on em- ployment discrimination. He'd used the same word in exams for 10 years. But this year, one student said she "had to seek counsel immediately af- ter the exam to calm myself." McWhorter says those students are lying. Why? "Claiming that kind of victimhood gives them a sense of belonging, of togetherness, a sense that they're contributing to a struggle that their ancestors dealt with in a more con- crete way." The students demanded the pro- fessor be punished. He was. The law school suspended him in the name of "social justice." "Social justice seeks to redis- tribute wealth and power between groups to suit what some political au- thority thinks is the right outcome," says Sandefur. I push back. "Social justice just means it's time to pay attention to the minorities who never got justice." "No," he responds. "Social justice (says), 'We're going to reorganize how people live their lives, silence some groups that have been heard Despite its liberal tendencies, The Washington Post editorial board once acknowledged that in a democ- racy, "everyone can't be entitled to everyone else's money." Well, it may have had that wrong because President Joe Biden is su- persizing the entitlement state of America at a pace that makes Presi- dent Lyndon B. Johnson's Great So- ciety initiatives seem like a fiscal bargain. By the way, that was the in- famous War on Poverty that spent more than $5 trillion over the next 25 years, and as the old saying goes: We fought a war on poverty, and pov- erty won. But here we go again. Biden al- ready has spent $1.9 trillion on so- cial welfare programs — including unemployment benefits, free health care, more generous food stamps, rental assistance, and more money for schools and state governments. Now he wants to add to that a $ 3.5 trillion "social infrastructure bill" — this is the new term for "welfare" — that includes all sorts of new enti- tlements, such as universal and ful- ly subsidized day care, prekinder- garten, free community college and student loan for- giveness for chil- dren who went to Harvard University. Democrats are also debating whether to make the weekly $ 300 "temporary" bonus unemploy- ment benefits per- manent. That way, no one will ever have to work. Most dangerous of all is the planned expansions of Medicare and Medicaid. According to the watch- dog group Truth in Accounting, these programs already have a long- term deficit of more than $55 trillion. So, naturally, Biden and the Dem- ocrats want to put more passengers on this fiscal Titanic. The Medicare plan would provide a whole array of new benefits, such as vision, hearing and dental care, all paid for by taxpayers. It is at a time when Medicare trustees warn that Medicare Part A's "trust fund" is likely to run dry by about 2026 and possibly as early as 2024. Se- niors should be up in arms over this raid on the Medi- care trust fund. By the way, Congress al- ready dipped into Medi- care's reserves to help fund the COVID-19 bailout efforts this spring. David Jonas, a former staff- er for Barack Obama, recent- ly spilled the beans in a tweet about the Democrats' scheme. He said that "the politics ... are near per- fect" because "Medicare expansions are forever." He's right, of course. Once you start giving people free things, it's a near political impossi- bility to take them away. It is the in- sidious nature of the entitlement can- cer cells. The Democrats also want to pro- vide new bribes to citizens of red states to sign up for free Medicaid benefits. This program, too, is finan- cially flimsy, and so when the A fford- There are a lot of partisan political issues out there, but election integri- ty shouldn't be one of them. What could be more basic to the very concept of representative gov- ernment than having citizens trust that an election—whether it be for president or dog catcher—was fair- ly won or fairly lost? Yet in the recent past, this issue has become very contentious. For purposes of our discussion here, let's put aside any feelings we might have regarding a specific election. Here's the conflict: One side is primarily concerned that all votes are legitimately cast; that is, each vote can be traced to the person vot- ing. The other side is primarily con- cerned that as many people as pos- sible have the opportunity to vote. Now a very obvious question aris- es. Why are these two concerns in- compatible? Well, the answer is: They are not. We should be able both to verify voters and make it easy to vote at the same time. Yes, even in politics, it should be possible to walk and chew gum si- multaneously. Let's look to see how Georgia, where there has been much controversy over voting, has ad- dressed this issue. First concern: voter ID. The recent Geor- gia voter reform law requires voters to provide identifica- tion to receive an absentee ballot. Since 2008, the state has required a voter to show a government-issued photo ID when he or she votes in person. To require the same level of se- curity for absentee voting seems to make perfect sense. In fact, one wonders why this wasn't addressed sooner. There's simply no good ev- idence that possessing an ID pres- ents a hardship to voting. Have you ever met anyone who didn't have an ID? Anyone? When a federal judge threw out the ACLU-led law- suit against Georgia's in-per- son voter ID law, he noted that in two years of litigation, the challengers could not pro- duce a single resident of the state unable to vote because of the new ID requirement. But wait, as they say in T V ads, there's more! The new Georgia law says you can satisfy the voter ID requirement with a "copy of a current utility bill, bank statement, govern- ment check, paycheck, or other gov- ernment document that shows the name and address" of the would-be voter. It's worth noting that the language on voter IDs for absentee ballots is identical to the language in the fed- eral Help America Vote Act of 2002, which passed the U.S. Senate by a Race for the Cure By Star Parker Give Me a Break John Stossel Continued on page 5 Continued on page 5 Continued on page 5 Eye on the Economy By Stephen Moore Everyone is entitled to everything Heritage Viewpoint By Hans von Spakovsky Points to Ponder By Rev. Curtis Bond The truth about Georgia's voting law Billionaire's space race Continued on page 5 When I was growing up, we had the excitement of the space race be- tween the Soviets and the USA. It was an exciting time to witness his- tory in the making. Who can forget Walter Cronkite announcing, "Man on the Moon;" one of the few times Walter was at a loss for words? Since the conclusion of the Space Shuttle program, NA- SA has had little publicity. However, it appears we have a resurgence in space exploration and another space race developing. This race is not between nations but between billionaires. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson are three of the richest people in the world and are spending their own money to travel to distant reaches. Musk envisions populating Mars, and Bezos envisions moving indus- try and perhaps some luxury condos into orbit. NASA wants to return to the moon and there is a discussion about colonizing the moon. Science fiction writers, mov- ies and television shows have been hurling earthlings to the far reach- es of the galaxy for years. William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy be- came icons as Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock on Star Trek. Every episode began with the same opening narra- tive: "These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mis- sion: to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civili- zations. To boldly go where no man has gone before! " Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, was a Southern Bap- tist, but drifted away from Christi- anity and described himself as a hu- manist. He said he believed in God, but not the God most people think of. Roddenberry said of Christianity, "How can I take seriously a God-im- age that requires that I prostrate my- self every seven days and praise it? That sounds to me like a very inse- cure personality." He also believed that all "contem- porary Earth religions would be gone by the 23rd century." He in- tentionally avoided the question of religion and of finding "the God of the universe" in his episodes. Warp drive became the power to take hu- mans in their "starship" to the edg- es of space, and human reasoning became God. Will Bezos and com- pany conquer this final frontier and become the pioneers of human in- terplanetary space travel? Will they bump into God? The scriptures shed some light on this question. 1 Corinthians 15:40 - 47 says, "There are heavenly bod- ies and earthly bodies, but the glo- ry of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust." God created humans from dust. We walk on a planet of dust, eat food harvested from fields of dust and we return to dust. This undeniable truth has the final say on space travel. Humans need oxygen to survive. Some people when traveling to Den- ver notice a slight change in their breathing because they are one mile above sea level. Travel to Pike's Peak and at 14,100 feet, you will experi- ence shortness of breath. Travel a little higher and you will enter the death zone. Science sets the death zone at 26,000 ft. This is the point where the pressure of oxygen is in- sufficient to sustain human life for an extended time span. Everything we need to survive in space, such as food, water, and air, must travel with us as there are no convenience stores Court Purdue