The Press-Dispatch
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A-10 Wednesday, September 1, 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 It's time for national soul- searching A fter the attacks on our nation on Sept. 11, 2001, President George W. Bush took to the airways to address the American people. Speaking to a nation in shock, he cast what had occurred in the frame- work of good and evil. "Today, our nation saw evil," the president said. And he offered up solace in Psalm 23, "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil for you are with me." Several days later, a number of evan- gelical pastors, including Pat Robert- son and Jerry Falwell Sr., picked up on the theme of good and evil, reward and punishment, and suggested we must look inside of our nation as well as out- side. We must check ourselves. Pat Robertson issued a press re- lease, as was reported in The New York Times, saying, "In a country rampant with materialism, internet pornogra- phy and lack of prayer, 'God Almighty is lifting his protection from us.'" These pastors got major pushback in the country for suggesting that this horrible occasion provided good reason for self-examination, and Bush, himself a born-again Christian, disavowed the pastors. The White House issued a state- ment saying: "The president believes that terrorists are responsible for these acts. ... He does not share those views, and believes that those remarks are in- appropriate." Of course, no pastor questioned who actually committed the acts of terror. They suggested that, along with the ac- tions we take against the terrorists, we must also check our own moral state of affairs to try to understand why such a horrible act of violence could have been successfully carried out on our own soil. We might recall that the pilots who flew those planes, transforming com- mercial airliners into lethal weapons, trained in our country. And while these preparations in our own backyard for what occurred on Sept. 11, 2001, were taking place, the president of the United States, Bill Clin- ton, was preoccupied committing adul- tery in the Oval Office. Now here we are, 20 years later, hav- ing spent more than $2 trillion in our operations in A fghanistan, with a loss of some 2,400 American lives. The Tal- iban, against whom we launched hostil- ities in 2001, is back in power. By some estimates, their control in A fghanistan is broader than it was in 2001. Maybe today, as the United States withdraws from A fghanistan in despair, shame and confusion, and as we note 20 years since the loss of 2,977 American lives to terror in our homeland, there will be greater appreciation for doing some national soul-searching. We needn't just turn back to the ad- monitions of a few evangelical pastors 20 years ago. We can turn back 225 years to 1796, to the counsel provided to a young, new nation by its first pres- ident, George Washington in his fare- well address. Washington reminded his country- men that theirs is a country rooted in eternal truths and warned about de- taching from those truths and allow- ing the nation to deteriorate into raw politics. "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, re- ligion and morality are indispensable supports. ... Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of reli- gious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with cau- tion indulge the supposition that moral- ity can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the in- fluence of refined education ... reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in ex- Lessons from Georgia Georgia (the ex-Soviet Republic, not the U.S. state) is now a remark- able success story. Its economy is growing at 5 per- cent per year, and the country ranks ahead of the United States in eco- nomic freedom. Yet, 20 years ago, Georgia was even more miserably poor than the rest of the former Soviet Union. So, what can America and the rest of the world learn from Georgia's progress? A lot, says my executive producer Maxim Lott. He's spent the past sev- eral months in Georgia and made a StosselT V video about it. All former Soviet states are poor because the communists had grabbed everyone's private property and put it under government control. They thought they were smart enough to run the economy. They did things like order Georgians to pro- duce tea. Soon, 95 percent of tea in the Soviet Union came from Georgia. But Georgia is not the best place to grow tea. A fter the Soviet Union collapsed, "People started to taste Indian tea and realized that tea is actually bet- ter," says Georgian politician Zurab Japaridze. "Nobody wanted Geor- gian tea." That industry, and most others, vanished when Soviet support end- ed. "Three-fourths of the Georgian economy disappeared," he says. Central planners are never smart enough to run something as complex as an economy. Fortunately, in Georgia, an eccen- tric libertarian, Kakha Bendukidze, became economy minister in 2004. He made "everything private, as much as possible." Georgia scrapped 90 percent of li- censing and permit requirements. That reduced corruption. "Every license means interaction with officials. Every interaction with the official can be an open door for a corrupt request," explains Fady Asly, chairman of Georgia's International Chamber of Commerce. Before those reforms, "Corrup- tion was so rampant! " says Asly. "A high-ranking official told me: 'I have a friend who's very honest. We would like him to chair of the anti-corrup- tion commission, but he has to pay someone $10,000 to get this job.' The future chair of the anti-corrup- tion commission had to bribe some- one to get the job! " Georgia has come a long way since then. With fewer rules to obey and licenses to get, there are fewer rea- sons to bribe. Transparency Interna- tional now says Georgia is less cor- rupt than all its neighbors. The coun- try also fired its entire police force, customs office and tax service, and diminished government agencies by half. This created a "huge boom," says Asly. "Georgia turned from a failed state to a very successful state." Its economy grew 10 percent a year. Buildings that had been burned were restored. McDonald's and KFC arrived. Some prosperity came to Georgia. "This was kind of a libertarian uto- pia for four years," says Iva Nachke- bia, national coordinator for Geor- gia's branch of Students for Liberty. But then the politicians decided that since things were going well, they would get in on the action. In- stead of leaving markets free, they gave privileges to cronies. "They chose 10, 15, 20 business- men who were close to the govern- ment," says Asly. "And they started protecting them at the expense of their competitors." Since the protected businesses got big tax breaks, businessmen like Asly couldn't compete. "A fter losing a couple of million dollars," says Asly, "I decided to stop the business." When President Biden addressed the American people on the A fghani- stan withdrawal, we were witnessing the death spiral of one of the most calamitous U.S. administrations of modern times. This presidency is sinking faster than the Titanic, increasingly friend- less on the world stage, and looking like easy prey to America's enemies, from Beijing to Moscow. Biden appeared confused, angry, incoherent and clueless as he spoke from the White House. He is no John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan or FDR. His presidency is a disaster of epic proportions. Not only was Biden defiant as he took questions from the media, he was also spreading the kind of dis- information that is unworthy of an American president. For example, he declared that America's allies were not questioning the credibility of the U.S. over the A fghanistan debacle, and fully supported the decision to withdraw. This is a flat-out lie. Indeed, deep-seated criticism of the Biden strategy has spread across Europe. Some of the harshest words for the Biden administration have come from Berlin, where Armin Laschet, who has replaced Angela Merkel as the leader of Germany's ruling Christian Democratic Union (CDU), referred to the American withdraw- al as "the biggest debacle that NA- TO has suffered since its founding." Biden is clearly living in the Twi- light Zone if he thinks that U.S. al- lies, from London to Warsaw, are not openly questioning the Biden admin- istration's credibility on the interna- tional stage. This is a bitter, defiant and delu- sional president who will not accept reality. America's allies are deeply con- cerned over the chaos in Kabul and many have sent in their own forces to extract their citizens before the Talban take full control of the city, including the main airport. In real- ity, Joe Biden has dramatically un- dermined U.S. allies and Ameri- ca's standing in the world. Further, by fail- ing to consult the British government and other NATO al- lies on the timing of the A fghanistan withdrawal, Presi- dent Biden is dam- aging the US -UK special relationship, America's most im- portant bilateral partnership. The British have fought shoulder to shoulder with the United States on the battlefields of A fghanistan, and more than 400 British military per- sonnel have laid down their lives in combat. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attack on the U.S., the British were the first to stand with the U.S., and take part in military strikes against the Tali- ban. The British see Biden's actions as a betrayal. They have been stunned and shocked by the amateurish and disorganized approach taken by the Biden administration, which has put the lives of several thousand Brit- ish citizens at risk. Staggeringly, it took President Biden 36 hours to re- turn a call from Prime Minister Bo- ris Johnson last week, as the Taliban strengthened their iron grip over the A fghan capital. The British parliamentary re- sponse has been fast and furious. The House of Commons was recalled from summer recess last Wednes- day, with dozens of members of Par- liament and government ministers condemning the "catastrophic" and "shameful" approach of the Biden presidency. One MP spoke of Biden "throwing us and everybody else to the fire." Others referred to the U.S. president as "dishonorable" for blaming the A fghans for their own demise, and accusing them of refus- ing to fight. The criticism from MPs was wide- ly echoed in the British press. In the words of the London Dai- ly Telegraph: "The US's taw- dry, hopelessly mishandled withdrawal matters to the en- tire Western community be- cause it has grim humanitar- ian consequences, Islamists have gained a base of opera- tions, and our global compet- itors are emboldened." No U.S. president in mod- ern times has been more loudly and unanimously re- buked by Great Britain's political leaders than Joe Biden. On a visit to London last week, I was struck by the damning com- ments reserved for the U.S. presi- dent not only from backbench MPs but also from government ministers as well. British lawmakers are utterly hor- rified with Biden's reckless and dan- gerous approach. They are also ap- palled by his hostile stance toward Brexit, his unwillingness to move forward with a U.S.-UK trade deal, and his administration's "woke" far- left ideology. President Biden is greatly under- mining America's position as the leader of the free world. His disas- trous foreign policy and weak leader- ship is hugely damaging to the image of the United States across the At- lantic and throughout the free world. The U.S. needs a grown-up in charge. President Biden is rapidly be- coming an embarrassment, and his non-leadership is a gift to the ene- mies of the West, from the Taliban to the Chinese Communist Party. America has never been weaker at the helm in the modern era, and many of our allies are now looking to America post-2024 for the resto- ration of U.S. leadership. Nile Gardiner is Director of The Heritage Foundation's Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom and Bernard and Barbara Lomas Fellow. Race for the Cure By Star Parker Give Me a Break John Stossel Continued on page 11 Continued on page 11 Heritage Viewpoint By Nile Gardiner, Ph.D. Points to Ponder By Rev. Curtis Bond Brits feel betrayed by Afghanistan fiasco Socialist accomplishments Continued on page 11 With the emergence of political ac- tivists and teachers espousing Com- munistic/Marxist/Socialist ideas, it is beneficial to remind ourselves what socialism and communism has accomplished. A fter the communists gained total control of Russia, Stalin was deter- mined to root out and dispose of any- one who did not wholeheartedly em- brace socialism. Christians were at the top of the list for eradication. Es- timates range from 12 to 20 million Christians killed. He was successful in purging another 20 -40 million un- desirables and enemies of the state using the Gulag, the Great Purge, and his engineered "Great Fam- ine" as weapons of elimination. Peo- ple vanishing from sight became so common in the Soviet Union that ma- ny men slept with guns under their pillows in case there was a knock at the door in the middle of the night and it was the NK VD summoning them for questioning. These men would take their own life because they knew most people picked up by the NK VD never came back. Mao and his communists in Chi- na killed about 15 to 55 million peo- ple. Mao's "The Great Leap" plan changed the lives of rural Chinese people. This included the ill-con- ceived mandatory agricultural col- lectivization (Stalin did the same). The failure of this plan and the fam- ine that followed resulted in tens of millions of deaths. The Great Chi- nese Famine was of human origin and the largest famine in human history. It is impossible to determine the exact number of people who were victims of Stalin and Mao's social- ism. The best guess is 50 -100 mil- lion people perished. These were not deaths caused by war. These were people murdered at the hands of a to- talitarian regime. Even Stalin could not comprehend such a massive number of fatalities. He said, "The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic." There is no better expert on how to commit mass murder than Stalin. If you want to know what it was like to live under Stalin's blood- thirsty rule, you have no further to look than modern North Korea. The founder of North Korea, or official- ly the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) was Kim Il-sung. Kim Il-sung was a student of Stalin. He took a page from Stalin's play- book, creating a cult of personality as ruler. Like Stalin, he prized titles such as, "Great Leader, Comrade, Fa- therly leader." He ruled North Ko- rea with an iron fist until his death in 1994. His official title in death is, "Eternal Leader of Juche Korea and the Eternal President of the Repub- lic." His son Kim Jong-il and grand- son Kim Jong-un have continued his style of tyrannical rule. Like Stalin, Kim had a Christian background. Kim was raised in a Presbyterian family; his maternal grandfather was a Protestant minis- www.UebelhorGM.com Jasper • 1-800-937-8721 CHEVROLET Court