The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/1458183
My D-4 Wednesday, March 9, 2022 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 Return of the 'evil empire' Regardless of what any American feels about what steps we should take in response to Russian Presi- dent Vladimir Putin's aggressive in- cursion into Ukraine, for sure most are appalled by what he has done. As Putin moves to regain Russian control over nations that once were part of the Soviet sphere, we ought to think about the circumstances under which the Soviet Union collapsed to consider how it all might be reversed. In March 1983, President Ronald Reagan spoke to the National Asso- ciation of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida, and delivered what would fa- mously become known as the speech in which he called the Soviet Union the "evil empire." Discussing America's efforts to confront the Soviet Union's nuclear arsenal, he said: "I urge you to be- ware the temptation of pride ... de- claring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil em- pire ... and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil." Reagan spoke more than powerful words of truth that day. He spoke al- most as a prophet. He noted further: "While Ameri- ca's military strength is important, let me add here that I've always main- tained that the struggle now going on for the world will never be decided by bombs or rockets, by armies or mil- itary might. The real crisis we face today is a spiritual one; at root, it is a test of moral will and faith." Some eight years later, the Sovi- et Union, which for years during the Cold War was thought to be the su- perpower rival to the United States, collapsed. There was no war. There was just resolve and Reagan's unwav- ering commitment to the principles he articulated that day in 1983. And eight years after that speech, in 1991, Ukraine, now under siege by Putin, was freed from subjuga- tion under the Soviet regime and declared its freedom, independence and sovereignty. As Putin tries to reverse history, it is upon us to not forget that Reagan declared the global struggle as first and foremost a spiritual struggle, a struggle of good against evil. As Americans watch events un- fold in Ukraine, we must refocus on what is going on in our own country. If we lose a sense of the importance and relevance of Reagan's words as they apply at home, we surely will not know how to relate to events as they transpire in the rest of the world. And there is plenty of reason to be- lieve we are losing that perspective at home. We see a direct correlation within our own borders, in our own country, of the decline in faith in the eternal principles that keep us free, and with this decline, Americans are gradual- ly but decisively choosing to abandon their freedom. In a survey published at the end of last year, Gallup reported that 69 per- cent of Americans self-identified as Christians in 2021, compared with 90 percent who self-identified as Chris- tians in 1971. Twenty-one percent said they have "no religion" in 2021, compared to 4 percent in 1971. In 1965, 70 percent of Americans said religion is "very important" to them. By 2021, this was down to 49 percent. Coincident with the decline of the importance that Americans give to religion, Americans have turned their lives increasingly over to gov- ernment control. In 1950, government at federal, state and local levels took almost 23 percent of the American economy. In 2020, this reached almost 45 percent. Turning back again to Reagan's words, "But we must never forget that no government schemes are going to perfect man." Our struggle, said Reagan, is about good and evil. It's no accident that as America re- treats in this struggle, as Americans increasingly believe that government can perfect man and as we relinquish our freedom, that despots like Putin will step forward and try to move the world back to a darker time. Star Parker is president of the Cen- ter for Urban Renewal and Education and host of the weekly television show "Cure America with Star Parker." My dream State of the Union President Joe Biden just gave his State of the Union Address. Here's what I wish Biden said: "Russia's unwarranted invasion of Ukraine reminds us why it's cru- cial that America's military remains strong, and focused on defense, not distractions like gender equity. "I stand with the people of Ukraine, and I will help them where I can, but America will not enter this war. "My predecessors involved us in wars all over the world. Today, America posts soldiers in 80 coun- tries: 25,000 in South Korea, 30,000 in Germany, 50,000 in Japan ... "I will bring those troops home. Those countries can pay for their own defense. I promise I will deploy Amer- ica's soldiers only if there is a direct threat to America's interests. "Avoiding war was one of the things my predecessor got right. "Former President Donald Trump said he would 'bring our troops back home.' I followed through, and we now are out of A fghanistan. I didn't plan the exit well, but at least we fi- nally left. "Turning to my governance at home, I have a lot to apologize for. Two years into the pandemic, I final- ly understand how much I got wrong. "I said we wouldn't mandate vac- cines. My press secretary assured re- porters, 'That's not the role of the fed- eral government.' "But just a few weeks later, I man- dated vaccines for most employees. "I said, 'This is not about freedom or personal choice.' But that's non- sense. It was exactly about freedom and choice. Fortunately, the Supreme Court struck down my mandate. "My government made endless mistakes. "For a year, our Centers for Dis- ease Control and Prevention main- tained outdoor mask rules. That's ab- surd. It's almost impossible to con- tract COVID-19 outdoors. I think bu- reaucrats do things like that because they like bossing you around. "I'll stop that. "Next, during the pandemic, both Trump and I liked sending you mon- ey. 'I'm sure people will be very hap- py to get a big, fat beautiful check,' said Trump. I said, '85% of American households will have gotten a $1,400 rescue check.' "But government has no money of its own, so that money wasn't a gift; it's taken from you. Then Washing- ton, D.C., took a cut, and we handed out the rest like we're Santa Claus. "I'm not Santa. I promise, I'll stop giving away all this money! The na- tional debt is already an unsustain- able $ 30 trillion. There's no way I can pay that back. In fact, my reckless spending made the problem worse. I once even said, cluelessly, that my big spending would reduce inflation. Inflation then hit a 40 -year high. "But I've learned from my mis- takes! Starting today, I will cut irre- sponsible spending. "I will cut useless cabinet depart- ments, like Housing and Urban De- velopment, Labor and Agriculture. Agriculture employs almost 100,000 people. Why? Independent farmers grow the food. I've been in Washing- ton 50 years, and I still don't know what most of my bureaucrats do. "I'll get rid of the Department of Education, too. Why does it even exist? Education is a local respon- sibility. It's none of the federal gov- ernment's business! It's none of my business. "We don't need a Commerce De- partment. A fter all, commerce just happens. I'll get rid of those bureau- crats and sell the buildings. "If we got rid of harmful laws and departments, we could focus on what the government should do: keep us safe and free. "In closing, I pledge to follow our Constitution. It puts limits on what I can do. Trump once claimed that Ar- ticle II gave him the power to do what- ever he wanted. But that's nonsense. "We have limited powers. "I can't do whatever I want. "And from now on, I promise I will do less. "In fact, if I do my job right, you should barely know I'm here." John Stossel is creator of Stossel TV and author of "Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media." To quote a screaming John McEn- roe: "You cannot be serious! " Last week, the Biden administra- tion requested another $ 30 billion for COVID relief programs. Yes, I know that these days, $ 30 billion is a rounding error in the $ 6 trillion fed- eral budget. But isn't that precisely the problem? But, as Joe would say: Come on, man! The White House's latest plea for more money on top of the $4 tril- lion to $5 trillion is an insult. Biden wants $18 billion for antivirals, $5 bil- lion for testing and $ 3 billion to com- bat future viruses. Isn't that already the job of the $7 billion-a-year CDC? It is an incredibly brazen request, given the hundreds of billions of dol- lars of wasteful and fraudulent pay- ments under the $1.9 trillion Amer- ican Rescue Plan passed last year. That includes $150 billion in theft from the unemployment insurance program, an estimated $200 billion in wrongful payments under Medic- aid and at least $100 billion of fraud in the small business PPP program. (The fraud number could be much more significant than this, but the investigation is ongoing.) Then there is the $2 billion spent on mailing COVID test kits to peo- ple. So, in the middle of the omicron wave, we effectively took the test kits off the shelves of local pharma- cies and stores at a time when people needed the tests and then used the Postal Service to mail the free kits to mil- lions. But guess what? Many of the kits took more than two weeks to arrive, and many more still haven't arrived. They will eventually, but the latest wave of the virus has passed. So, I suspect most will get thrown in the garbage; your tax dollars at work. The outrage here is that no one in Washington seems to be outraged. One of the new and few heroes of the taxpayer is Sen. Mike Braun, the Republican from Indiana. I recent- ly asked him why no one stops the spending machine on Capitol Hill. He shakes his head and tells me that there are "only about three people in the Senate who actually want to cut government spending." Republicans are generally better on spending than Democrats, but they are hardly fiscal saints. There were 19 Senate Republicans who voted for the bloated $1.1 trillion in- frastructure bill. More than a doz- en Republicans support a $ 300 bil- lion corporate welfare bill for Amer- ican microchip producers, comput- er companies and so on. This is called the "Amer- ican Competitiveness Act." Can someone please tell these members of Congress that the way to make America more glob- ally competitive is to stop spending and borrowing so much money? With the national debt now at $ 30 trillion, Congress should demand an immediate, thorough au- dit of every government program to find out where the waste is. Then, instead of spending billions more, it is time for an across-the-board 10 % cut to every program. Then cut 3% to 5% each year until the budget is bal- anced. Is that so hard? Oh, and by the way, you know that $ 30 billion that Biden wants for more COVID spending? Believe it or not, there is still at least $500 billion from the last COVID bill that still hasn't been spent. How sad is that? The gov- ernment can't spend the money Con- gress is giving it fast enough. In other words, the state of the union is ... broke. President Joe Biden's State of the Union address on March 1 offers a unique opportunity to break with past pandemic policies and announce that we are moving on from COVID-19. The public policy response to the pandemic has so far depended on non- pharmaceutical interventions and vaccines. These policies appear to have reached the limits of their utility. Federal public health officials urged lockdowns, mask mandates, school closures, and other restrictive policies in hopes of slowing the conta- gion's spread until a vaccine arrived. By last July, Biden—who had cam- paigned on promising to "shut down" the virus—announced that vaccines had brought us "closer than ever to declaring our independence from a deadly virus." But independence proved elu- sive. Cases reached a new high later that summer, and vaccination rates stalled. The president's rhetoric took a toxic turn. He accused tens of mil- lions of unimmunized Americans of creating a "pandemic of the unvacci- nated." "The unvaccinated overcrowd our hospitals, are overrunning the emer- gency rooms and intensive care units, leaving no room for someone with a heart attack, or pancreatitis, or can- cer," he announced last summer. We recently published a Heritage Foundation special report that exam- ines data from throughout the pan- demic. Our paper looked at a num- ber of aspects about the pandemic, in- cluding the president's assertions and exposed that claim as false. First, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data on COVID-19 -re- lated hospitalizations does not distin- guish between patients admitted for that illness and those admitted for other diseases who also happened to test positive for COVID-19. It thus vastly overstates the impact of COVID-19 on the hospital system. New York state does keep that da- ta, depicted in the chart below. De- pending on the time frame, the num- ber of admissions due to COVID-19 is either slightly larger or equal to ad- missions of patients who tested posi- tive for COVID-19 but were admitted for other reasons. Second, the CDC has failed to dis- close sufficiently comprehensive da- ta about the vaccination status of hospital patients with COVID-19. The New York Times has reported that "the agen- cy has been reluctant to make those figures public because they might be in- terpreted as the vaccines being ineffective." Some states and foreign countries do collect and report that data. Massa- chusetts, for example, re- ports that vaccinated patients consti- tuted a rising percentage of admis- sions with COVID-19, outnumbering unvaccinated patients by early Feb- ruary. The United Kingdom keeps even more detailed data, grouping patients by age and vaccination status. The U.K. looked at patients who sought emergency care, returned positive COVID-19 tests, and then were ad- mitted to the hospital. In the four weeks ending Feb. 6, 64% of such patients were either ful- ly vaccinated or boosted. In every age group, vaccinated patients outnum- bered unvaccinated patients. As the chart below shows, the rate of hospitalizations was lower for vac- cinated people than unvaccinated people in every age group under 60. Among people over 60, those who received three shots had the small- est risk of being hospitalized with COVID-19. Vaccines thus appear to reduce the risk of severe illness. The president's claim that unvacci- nated people are overcrowding hospi- tals doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Nor does his promise to "shut down" the virus seem feasible. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky has observed that COVID-19 "is likely to become an endemic disease here in the United States and, really, around the world." "Zero COVID-19" is thus an unre- alistic policy aim. The president should state that explicitly. He should continue to en- courage vaccines to reduce the risk of severe illness. But he should also walk back his false claim that this is a pandemic of the unvac- cinated and recognize that most unvaccinat- ed people are unlikely to change their minds. He should instead an- nounce a new plan for living with the virus. He should note that most Americans have ac- quired some immunity to the pathogen natural- ly or through vaccines. And he should tout new medicines that patients can take at home that reduce the risk of hospitalization by 89 % . Our paper has modeled the effect of one of these medications, Pax- lovid. We found that, even if a new variant were to double the rate of COVID-19 -related hospitalizations from 3.5% to 7% of confirmed cases, Paxlovid would hold those hospital- izations well below the number of hos- pitalizations induced annually by the seasonal flu and the respiratory syn- cytial virus. The president should declare that COVID-19 is now a treatable disease. And he should acknowledge that it may well be with us into the foresee- able future, not unlike heart disease, cancer, and the seasonal flu. People at greatest risk should con- tinue to take precautions, but govern- ment mandates and restrictions are no longer appropriate. COVID-19 should cease to be the obsessive focus of public policy. Per- petuating the emergency mindset is futile, misguided, and just not feasi- ble. The president should call for a re- turn to normalcy in our communities, schools, and places of commerce, urge state and local governments to shelve restrictions and mandates, and declare that the U.S. is moving on from COVID-19. Doug Badger is a senior fellow for domestic policy studies at The Heritage Foundation. Race for the Cure By Star Parker Give Me a Break John Stossel Eye on the Economy By Stephen Moore The State of the Union is... Broke Heritage Viewpoint By Doug Badger COVID-19 data shows it's time for America to return to normal Court Social