The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/1402699
B-6 Wednesday, August 18, 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 Cancel culture will destroy our country The enabling tool of what we call "cancel culture" or "wokeness" is lan- guage. People are put in categories to which names are assigned, and this supposedly captures who they are and what should be done with them politically. Unfortunately, the whole business of racial identification and categori- zation is not about advancing the quality of the human condition and human dignity but about progressive politics. The left puts people in racial cat- egories as instruments toward their political agenda. In 1977, the Federal Interagency Committee on Education produced a five-race classification for the Amer- ican population: American Indian or Alaskan Native, Asian or Pacific Is- lander, Black, White and Hispanic. These categories, over time, con- tinued to undergo changes and re- finements. The Hispanic category emerged in the 1970s, and the legislation de- scribed this group as "Americans who identify themselves as being of Spanish-speaking background and trace their origin or descent from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Cen- tral and South America, and other Spanish-speaking countries." So, an American with roots in Spain and an American with roots in Peru wind up in the same category because their country of origin was Spanish-speak- ing. Hispanic is neither race nor eth- nicity. It is a category of political design, including individuals from 20 -plus countries, with no common- ality other than the language their grandparents spoke. In the 2020 census, there are 19 different possibilities for self-cate- gorization. In both the white and Black cat- egories, filers are now asked to re- spond to additional questions regard- ing their country of origin. The strangest part of the emer- gence of this movement as a politi- cal force is that it constitutes every- thing that supposedly is undesirable that we want to eliminate. Racism. Is it any less racism if I conclude who a person is and what they are about based on whether they are white or Black? Yet, here we are with a good part of our nation mobilized, adopting the disease that we all thought we were trying to eliminate as its cure. Last weekend, I came across a beautiful short video of the great Nobel laureate in physics, Richard Feynman, talking about knowledge. Feynman began his legendary ca- reer working on the Manhattan Proj- ect, which developed the first atom- ic bomb, and finished as a member of the commission that investigated the cause of the fatal explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986. The video starts with the head- line "Names Don't Constitute Knowl- edge." Feynman recalls walking through a park with his father and his father telling him the names of different birds in different languages. In the end, notes Feynman, you know what different people around the world call the same bird, but you know ab- solutely nothing about the bird. Consider what Feynman tells us in his observation that "names don't constitute knowledge." If we look in the Bible in the Book of Genesis, it says, "God had formed out of the ground every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call each one; and whatever the man called each living creature, that remained its name. And the man assigned names to all the cattle and to the birds of the sky." Man does not create reality. He just names it. Politics is the opposite. Rather than naming a reality that precedes him, of which he is a part, the pro- gressive political man pretends to create reality with his language and names. America was founded to be a free nation under God. Our government was not designed to replace God, but to be subservient to God. The so-called enlightened theory of wokeness will reduce America to a weak, balkanized country where Cuban people silenced Are they still protesting in Cuba? I don't know. The Cuban government has shut off the Cuban people's internet. The big demonstrations began four weeks ago, sparked, curiously, by a rap song. The key lyric is: "Free- dom! No more Doctrine! " "Doctrine" refers to the "constant cycle of propaganda" from the gov- ernment, explains Cuban emigre Alian Collazo in my newest video. Sadly, silly T V reporters in Amer- ica claimed the protests were about "hunger, pandemic restrictions and the lack of COVID vaccinations," or, according to ABC's George Stepha- nopoulos, "food and fuel shortages." "Nonsense! " says Collazo. The cause is clear. "The protesters were yelling, 'Down with communism! ' and 'Libertad! Liberty! '" Democratic socialist Rep. Alexan- dria Ocasio-Cortez claimed, "They are protesting the lack of materials during the pandemic, particularly the lack of medical supplies." Collazo is bewildered. "She speaks Spanish! Can she not listen to what the Cuban people are saying? 'Liber- tad' means 'freedom' ! " It's true that Cubans want food, "but if you don't have liberty, you don't have food." Some people say Cubans lack food because of what Ocasio-Cortez calls America's "absurdly cruel" embargo. The embargo is absurd and coun- terproductive. But that misses the point. "Do research on what the embar- go is! Medicine, food, and all of that can be traded," says Collazo. Yes, they can. America exempts food and medicine from its embargo. Also, at least 80 other countries do trade with Cuba. The real reason for shortages and suffering in Cuba is communism. "When the government controls your business," says Collazo, "peo- ple don't have food. All resources end up in the hands of the state." Other American "useful idiots," like Michael Moore, praise Cuba's "free" services. In his documentary "Sicko," Moore took a group of Americans to a Cuban hospital and celebrated how they were given free health care. But Collazo points out that "free" is misleading. "Go to a hospital in Cu- ba — they don't even have aspirin! Yeah, (health care's) free. (But) it's horrible." When the recent protests began, a reporter asked President Joe Biden's press secretary, Jen Psaki, "Do you think that people are leaving Cuba because they don't like communism." She responded, "They are opposed to the oppression (and) mismanage- ment of the government." She wouldn't condemn commu- nism by name. Fortunately, a few days later, her boss did. "Communism is a failed system, a universally failed system," said Biden. "I don't see socialism as a very useful substitute." Good for Biden for saying that. Collazo wishes he would do more. "The Cuban people are not asking for military intervention," he says. In- stead, "Get the president of the Unit- ed States to deliver internet." The current protests "happened spontaneously," says Collazo, "be- cause of social media. That's why the regime didn't even know about it ... they were surprised by the enor- mous amount of individuals that went out at the same time." Because of that, Cuba's govern- ment has now shut down the island's only internet provider. Future pro- tests will be hidden from the rest of the world. The United States could beam in- ternet into Cuba. I don't know if it would make a dif- ference. But Collazo thinks it would. "This is historic. In Cuba, we have never seen this." John Stossel is author of "Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media." For other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. Sometimes, when you go into a store with expensive merchandise on the shelves, you will see a sign that reads, "You break it, you buy it." That's a good slogan for the Re- publicans as they continue to battle the left's economically catastroph- ic quest to bankrupt our country by authorizing some $ 6 trillion of new spending. This is the economic the- ory that if the ship is sailing toward an iceberg, best to speed up. Under the Biden-Pelosi-Schumer plan, the national debt, which now stands at near $ 30 trillion and well above the warning sign of 100 per- cent of our GDP, would soar to close to $50 trillion in 10 years. A new study by FreedomWorks shows that the debt under the Democratic plan could rise to 200 percent of GDP over the next decade — almost twice as high as any previous time in our na- tion's history. This debt explosion will happen even though Democrats are also planning one of the largest tax in- creases in American history. President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi plan to do all of this without one single Republican vote — except for a handful of GOP sen- ators and House members who plan to vote for the sh- am $1 trillion "in- frastructure" bill, which mostly funds mass transit and green energy non- sense. Now here is where the story gets interesting. The Democrats have to authorize an increase in the debt ceiling to ac- commodate this multitrillion-dollar spend-a-thon. Republicans are right- ly saying, "Don't look at us." So now the Biden crowd and their pals in the media are saying that if Republi- cans don't approve a debt ceiling bill, THEY are the ones who are putting America in a financial crisis. Virginia Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, who is all in on the Biden spending stam- pede, sanctimoniously declared that Republicans should not "mess with the full faith and credit of the United States of America" by not co-signing the debt ceiling extension. That's rich. Doesn't it seem self-evident that the people who are putting our credit at risk and shoving us on to the precipice of a financial col- lapse are the ones who actu- ally approved all of this debt spending? They run up the credit card and blame the credit card company for not giving them a higher credit limit. Amazing. There is another reason for Repub- licans to play hardball on the debt ceiling bill. The only time in the last 35 years that the pols in Washing- ton — and this goes for both par- ties — have done anything to con- trol spending has been as a condi- tion of raising the debt ceiling. This is how we got the Gramm-Rudman- Hollings reforms in 1985, how Re- publicans in 1995 were able to end the Bill Clinton spending spree, and how we got the Budget Control Act As part of his "Build Back Better" agenda, President Joe Biden signed an executive order last week intend- ed to boost auto manufacturing in the U.S. The order plans to inject $ 3 billion into the U.S. auto industry to ensure that one-in-two new cars sold in 2030 are zero-emission vehicles, and to "grow good-paying, union jobs at home." In reality, this order is a gift to union leaders at a time when more and more workers are turning away from union representation. Executives from Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis N.V., as well as the president of United Auto Work- ers, Ray Curry, were invited to the White House as Biden announced the new executive order. Ironically, Tesla—who's Model 3 is the top selling electric vehicle in the world—was not invited to the event. Tesla has production facilities in Cal- ifornia, Nevada, New York, and Tex- as, and seems like the perfect com- pany to attend. Coincidentally, Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis N.V. have unionized workers, while Tes- la does not. This should be the first hint to let you know that this executive order is about supporting unions under the guise of improv - ing "fuel efficiency and emissions stan- dards." Biden's push to expand union mem- bership among auto workers is ex- pensive. U.S. automakers have been bat- tling higher domestic labor costs from unionization for decades. Although unionization has histor- ically resulted in higher wages for auto workers, firms are faced with higher production costs, which are eventually passed down to consum- ers. In 2020, the Center for Automo- tive Research estimated that au- tomakers' expenses will rise from $ 800 million to $1 billion by 2023. More specifically, hourly labor costs for union- ized workers are expected to increase up to $ 66 to $71 for Fiat Chrysler, GM, and Ford. Meanwhile, unionization is becoming increasingly un- popular among workers in the auto industry. Michigan, traditionally the auto manufacturing hub of America, has in fact experi- enced a decline in unionization since the 1980s. Union membership rates continued to fall after 2013 when the state's freedom-to-work laws came into effect. From 2012 to 2020, total union membership rates fell in Michigan by more than 2 percentage points, with a more substantial decline among government workers. Workers at Volkswagen's assem- Race for the Cure By Star Parker Give Me a Break John Stossel Continued on page 7 Continued on page 7 Continued on page 7 Continued on page 7 Eye on the Economy By Stephen Moore Say 'no' to a debt ceiling increase Heritage Viewpoint By Elizabeth Hanke Points to Ponder By Rev. Curtis Bond Biden wants more unionization, but do workers? America's Crisis "The nations have heard of your shame, and your cry has filled the land; For the mighty man has stum- bled against the mighty; They both have fallen together," Jeremiah 46:12. Jeremiah wrote this epitaph thousands of years ago. It is a lament about mighty men fighting against another. The men were the cham- pions hired to fight Egypt's battle. They got in each other's way, and were killed together. This is a fitting epitaph for the soon to be former gov- ernor of New York. America is in crisis on many fronts, politically, socially, cultural- ly, militarily, economically, ad nause- am. As Americans, when the chips are down, we expect everyone to put up their axes and come togeth- er. COVID-19 is a scourge of the world. In the past year there are so many conflicting reports, guidance, edicts etc. that people are develop- ing COVID fatigue. What we need at this critical juncture is for everyone to put down their swords and come together for everyone's wellbeing. Unfortunately, this will not hap- pen. From its early stages, COVID-19 was politicized as a weapon against President Trump. COVID came at just the right time to be used by the disingenuous to cultivate his re-elec- tion defeat. The political left needed someone with national stature to be the antagonist to Trump. The gover- nor of New York was their man. Last March 2020, New York was the epicenter of a disease out- break whose extent was unknown. More than a thousand people were being hospitalized every day and it alarmed experts that hospitals could run out of space to treat the influx of COVID patients. The gov- ernor ordered nursing homes to ac- cept COVID patients who were ready to be released. There was an outcry that the policy seemed to put frail and vulnerable nursing home resi- dents at enormous risk. Sadly, their cries fell on deaf ears and the news media was tone-deaf. During the crisis Trump sent a Navy hospital ship to New York to help with the pandemic. It sat unused because the governor and mayor of New York said they had everything under control. With their lockdowns and protocols, they presented New York as the model for the rest of the country. The news media made the governor of New York the hero of turning the corner on the Corona- virus outbreak. He received prime- time news coverage, appearing on many morning and evening shows. He wrote a book about how great he was, got an Emmy award, and was ready to be proclaimed a saint and all-around good guy. Then the bottom fell out. While he was busy trying to van- quish Trump, he wasn't paying close attention to all the bodies falling around him. Behind the T V lights and the news media's fawning, the controversial March 2020 directive instructing nursing homes to take in hospital- ized COVID patients was circling back to bite him. Within days of Biden assuming the presidency, New York State released a report reveal- ing that the state health department under-reported nursing home deaths by as much as 50 % . The state report- ed only 8,000 nursing home deaths; the real number was over 15,000. Sending COVID infected people to nursing homes was a death sen- tence for many residents living there in good health. The report stated Court