The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/1404755
C-4 Wednesday, August 25, 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 Debacle in Afghanistan symptom of confusion at home President Joe Biden was right in his speech to the nation about our withdrawal from A fghanistan, that a long legacy of American involvement there preceded him. But across the board, in domes- tic as well as foreign policy, any new president inherits realities that pre- cede him. The issue confronting ev- ery president is what principles and policies will he put in place to deal with these existing realities that will define his administration. Most clear now is that America's withdrawal from A fghanistan is sur- rounded by a perception of confu- sion, weakness and humiliation. For anyone who believes that our nation should be a beacon of strength for freedom in the world, that beacon has been deeply tarnished. According to The Jerusalem Post, these are the nations that will most benefit from this moment: Qatar, Russia, China, Pakistan, Turkey and Iran. According to the Post, "Most of these countries have hosted the Tali- ban or tacitly backed them." In other words, this round has been won by forces in the world for whom freedom is not a value. Biden in his remarks said, "We went to A fghanistan almost 20 years ago with clear goals: get those who attacked us on Sept. 11, 2001, and make sure al-Qaida could not use A fghanistan as a base from which to attack us again." This is inaccurate. Months after the attack on Sept. 11, 2001, Presi- dent George W. Bush defined a two- pronged strategy of retaliation in his State of the Union address. One, "Shut down terrorist camps, disrupt terrorist plans and bring terrorists to justice." This was accomplished in our successful military incursion in A fghanistan. But second, "We must prevent the terrorists and regimes who seek chemical, biological or nuclear weap- ons from threatening the United States and the world." Bush rightly noted that A fghani- stan could not and cannot be viewed in isolation from forces in the world that hate us and hate our ideals. This humiliation of our nation in the cur- rent withdrawal from A fghanistan strengthens those forces. Although Biden decided to contin- ue the process of withdrawing from A fghanistan, he reversed President Donald Trump's withdrawal from the deal with Iran, and Biden's deal strengthens rather than weakens Iran and creates a path leading to nuclear capability of this dangerous and threatening nation. But most critical is to appreciate that we cannot succeed in defending our nation abroad if we are not clear at home who we are. President Ronald Reagan ob- served, "While America's military strength is important… I've always maintained that the struggle now go- ing on for the world will never be de- cided by bombs or rockets, by armies or military might. The real crisis we face today is a spiritual one; at root, it is a test of moral will and faith." Our enemies, per Reagan, "must be made to understand: We will nev- er compromise our principles and standards. We will never give away our freedom. We will never abandon our belief in God." It is here that Biden's credibility is so deeply in question. Under the leadership of this ad- ministration, the values that Amer- icans have always known that pro- tect individual freedom and protect God-fearing Americans — certainly those that understand this as Chris- tianity — are on historically shaky ground. Cancel culture and wokeness limit our ability to speak and run our pri- vate lives and businesses freely. The values that have sustained marriage and family and protect the unborn have been dangerously weakened. Government expansion and incur- sion into private life is unprecedent- ed. Per the Hoover Institution's John Cogan, if Biden plans find their way into law, "for the first time in histo- ry, more than half of all Americans Coronavirus censorship YouTube just froze Sen. Rand Paul's YouTube channel. That's just wrong. Small-minded. Counterproductive. YouTube says Paul violated their COVID-19 misinformation policy when he told an interviewer, "Most of the masks you get over the counter don't work ... virus particles are too small and go right through." Paul didn't make that up. Properly worn N95 masks are ef- fective, but two peer-reviewed stud- ies suggest that simple masks might not work at all. But the studies aren't perfect, so Paul shouldn't use phrases like "no value." But give him a break; that's how people talk! It's good if he tells people not to trust cloth masks. Unfortunately, YouTube bans any video that contradicts pronounce- ments of the World Health Organi- zation. The rule makes it impossible to criticize WHO policy, even though one WHO video says "wear a mask regardless of the distance from oth- ers." WHO bureaucrats aren't perfect. They made many mistakes during COVID-19. Other health "experts" once rejected germ theory and told people with ulcers to drink milk. Such mistakes got corrected through criticism and debate. But YouTube now forbids that! Last month, Paul got into a heat- ed debate with Dr. Anthony Fauci over money the National Institutes of Health gave to Chinese scientists. Paul asked if it was used to do "gain- of-function" research (science that makes diseases deadlier— to learn more about them). Paul didn't suggest that the exper- iment the U.S. government funded created COVID-19. It didn't. We know that because of COVID-19's molecu- lar structure. But gain-of-function is still risky science that deserves public discus- sion. The NIH did fund pre-pandem- ic experiments at Wuhan that com- bined coronaviruses to see if they could infect humans. "Does Fauci respond and explain to us in a reasonable fashion, why he thinks it's not gain of function? No! He calls me a liar," says Paul in my new video. Fauci did once write that even if a pandemic did occur from such re- search, "benefits ... outweigh the risks." "Sounds like incredibly bad judge- ment," says Paul. Yet the media attacked Paul's judgement instead, smirking at what they called his "conspiracy theories." Social media companies even banned suggesting that COVID-19 was man- made! "Never before could a couple of companies just shut conversation off," I say to Paul. "That's a real danger to scientific and journalistic inquiry," he replies. "The advancement of knowledge re - quires skepticism ... debate on both sides. (But) these monolithic social media companies are determining what the truth is." Well, what they say truth is. Maybe they banned the Chinese lab-leak idea because former Presi- dent Donald Trump expressed it. But Trump lying a lot doesn't make ev- erything he says false. There was actual evidence of a lab leak. American diplomats warned of risky experiments at the Wuhan lab before the pandemic. Three workers there got COVID-19 symptoms be- fore the disease appeared elsewhere. Only when that became public did Fauci say, "It could have been a lab leak." Then President Joe Biden or- dered an investigation. Suddenly, Facebook unbanned the theory. Its previous censorship relied on its sloppy and biased "fact-check" group, "Science Feedback," which has smeared me twice in the past. What other important truths does censorship conceal? We'll never know when Facebook/Twitter/You- Tube only allow us to hear one side. Paul says he's eager to "tell every- body how much they suck." Unlike some in Congress, he doesn't want to regulate social me- dia. He wants competition. They "will ultimately destroy their platform," says Paul. "Somebody ... is going to make a billion dollars when they develop the new Facebook." Paul helped create a site called Lib- erty Tree, where libertarian-leaning Milton Friedman used to quip that, in Washington, if a government program is working, Congress says we need to spend more money on it. And if a government program is fail- ing, Congress concludes we are not spending enough money on it. We are seeing that in spades with the unemployment insurance pro- gram that has been looted by fraud for nearly 18 months and has become a poster child of everything gone wrong in government (already) un- der President Joe Biden. CNBC recently investigated the ransacking of the unemployment in- surance program and was told by Mi- chele Evermore, a senior policy ad- viser for unemployment insurance: "What we're seeing now is really ter- rifying. Fraud has gotten so big." She wasn't exaggerating. The Department of Labor's Of- fice of Inspector General estimated up to $ 87 billion in fraudulent pay- ments in the program. $ 87 billion! And Washington yawns. Just a cost of doing business. Government auditors have uncov- ered billions of dollars stolen from taxpayers and de- posited in the bank accounts of fraud- sters living in Ni- geria, West A fri- ca, Mexico and the like. Call it a weird form of foreign aid. Billions more have been shelled out to people who can work, should work and have employers who want them back, but aren't going back to work. Under the old unemployment pro- gram, you had to at least certify that you are making a good faith effort to find a job. In the era of Biden and former President Donald Trump (thanks to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's amendments to the stimu- lus bill), workers don't need to even pretend they are looking for a job. In many blue states, that loophole still exists, even though there are 10 mil- lion job openings. This may explain why New York, New Jersey, Illinois and California have such sky-high unemployment rates. Then there is the ingenious new program for self-em- ployed workers that allows them to "self-certify" that they are out of work and el- igible. Tens of thousands of these folks collect benefits while they still make mon- ey in their business. As the inspector general report ex- plained, that program helped criminals raid the system. You think? It gets worse. Now Congress is set to give the Labor Department and states at least $240 million for "fraud prevention." Huh? The program's bank vaults have been plundered for over a year, and just now we are going to spend money on fraud pro- tection? The shysters in Congress are even counting the budget savings expect- ed from investigating the fraud that has already happened, as a budget "pay-for" to offset the cost of their President Joe Biden hurriedly he- licoptered back to Washington, D.C., from Camp David on Monday to at- tempt to explain the disaster that unfolded in A fghanistan, which is the direct result of his decision to remove all U.S. forces and support personnel. Instead of explaining what went wrong, Biden declared that he "did not regret" his decision, and spent the bulk of his 19 -minute speech de- flecting blame for the ongoing fias- co onto the A fghan government lead- ers, the A fghan Army, prior admin- istrations—essentially finding fault with everyone, except himself and his administration. In a speech which would have more appropriately been based on contrition and humility, Biden in- stead delivered a series of mistruths designed to portray his decision in the best possible light. Here are five statements that stood out as the most egregious. "We've developed counterterror- ism over-the-horizon capability that will allow us to keep our eyes firm- ly fixed on any di- rect threats to the United States in the region and to act quickly and de- cisively if needed." This statement was crafted to allay fears that now that America has left, we won't be able to continue to influ- ence events in A f- ghanistan. It's incorrect. With the Taliban now in complete control of the country, America's ability to un- derstand what is going on will be even less than what it was pre 9/11. Any A fghans who might previous- ly have been inclined to provide hu- man intelligence on events in coun- try will recognize that helping the U.S. comes at their own peril. The U.S. ability to influence events on the ground in A fghanistan has been re- turned to what President Bill Clinton had when he launched cruise mis- siles from the Arabian Sea into A fghanistan in 1998 at tent encampments housing terrorists. To strike A fghanistan will now require multi-hour flights from Qatar or carrier ships in the Persian Gulf, and will have to be done without eyes on the ground. "There was only the cold reality of either following through on the agreement to withdraw our forces or escalat- ing the conflict and sending thou- sands more American troops back into combat in A fghanistan, lurch- ing into the third decade of conflict." Biden sought to paint his choices as binary: either withdraw or send thousands more troops to fight the Taliban. But there was already a third option, which was already working. 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 Continued on page 5 Eye on the Economy By Stephen Moore Taxpayers are getting ripped off Heritage Viewpoint By Thomas Spoehr Points to Ponder By Rev. Curtis Bond Biden's mistruths on Afghanistan The criticism of education Continued on page 5 There was a time when the criti- cism of education was, Johnny can't read. Now Johnny does not need to read, write, or add. Oregon just passed a law that reading, writ- ing, and arithmetic are racist. High School Seniors in Oregon can grad- uate showing no proficiency in the "three R's." Taxpayers can breathe a sigh of relief knowing their school dollars are not being wasted on rac- ist textbooks and instruction. Johnny can now focus on more im- portant matters such as asserting himself as she. Recently, a north- ern Virginia school board voted to approve a new policy expanding the rights of gender-expansive and trans- gender students. The new policy al- lows students to take part in sports and other activities based upon the student's personal "asserted gender identity." Transgender students have access to school facilities that corre- spond to their gender identity. Most Christians, Jews, and Mus- lims believe God created humans in His own image, as expressed in the Book of Genesis. Jesus restated this teaching in Mark 10 :6 -9 "But from the beginning of the creation, God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'; so then they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let not man separate." In one swoop, Jesus sanctified the di- vision of the sexes and the institution of marriage as being created by God. God instructed Moses to tell the Hebrews, in Deut. 6:7 "You shall teach them [Laws of God] diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up." The Proverbs writ- er said in Prov. 22:6 "Train up a child in the way he should go, And when he is old, he will not depart from it." God commanded parents to teach their children about God. I studied child developmental psy- chology and socialization in college. When I went to college, professors taught every child was born with spe- cific genetic traits such as being male or female, mental ability, and physi- cal prowess. They believed that na- ture assigned gender identity at birth. Males would grow up men and fe- males would grow up females. There was a bestselling book written in 1992 describing the fundamental psycho- logical differences between the sexes entitled, "Men Are From Mars, And Women Are From Venus." Times have changed. Communist revolutionaries such as Lenin and Stalin understood the im- portance of propaganda in molding a child's thinking and ultimately mak- ing them a slave to the state. Stalin studied to become a priest but cast aside the priesthood and embraced godless communism. He knew social- ism's greatest enemy was the church and its steadfast belief in God. Stalin hated the church and said, "By May 1st, 1937, there should not be one sin- gle church left within the borders of Soviet Russia, and the idea of God will have been banished from the Soviet Union as a remnant of the Middle Ag- es, which has been used for the pur- pose of oppressing the working class- es." Millions of people were persecut- ed and killed as communism swept Russia, China, North Korea, Cuba, etc. The fundamental problem with so- cialism is it declares there is "no god;" the state is god, and the state decides what is true and false. Every person's Court