The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/1475203
D-4 Wednesday, August 3, 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 Race for the Cure By Star Parker Give Me a Break John Stossel See GOOD NEWS on page 5 See CRIME on page 5 Abortion, democracy and history When Sen. Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln faced off in a de- bate in Peoria, Illinois, in 1854, the issue tearing apart the nation was slaver y. A central issue was whether slav- er y would be permitted in new ter- ritories entering the union. Douglas' answer to the question was politics. Lincoln's answer was morality and the Bible. Douglas' answer to slaver y in new states, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, was democracy. Citizens would vote to permit or not permit slaver y in their state. Lincoln opposed the expansion of what he saw as the in- herently evil institution of slaver y. In the Peoria debate, Lincoln stated, "Judge Douglas interrupted me to say that the principle of the Nebraska bill was ver y old: that it originated when God made man and placed good and evil before him, allowing him to choose for himself, being responsible for the choice he should make." Lincoln's answer was, "God did not place good and evil before man, telling him to make his choice. On the contrar y, he did tell him there was one tree, of the fruit of which he should not eat, on pain of certain death." Lincoln argued, essentially, that at the heart of political freedom stands man's free choice and that the choic- es man makes have profound impor- tance and consequences. Douglas ar- gued that the most important thing is that we can choose. Lincoln argued that the most important thing is what we choose. Now here we are, almost 170 years after Lincoln and Douglas faced off in Peoria, and the nation is at a similar crossroads in another issue of grave moral consequence–our responsibili- ties to the unborn Justice Samuel Alito, in his opin- ion in the Dobbs decision that over- turned Roe v. Wade, argued from a legal, constitutional perspective. His conclusion, contrar y to the court's conclusion in Roe v. Wade, was the U.S. Constitution does not contain a right for a woman to abort her child. However, the practical, moral result of this decision is that Alito put the nation on the moral footing where Lincoln argued regarding slaver y. The moral consequence of Roe v. Wade was to institutionalize Douglas' argument that our ultimate Amer- ican value is choice – not what we choose. The moral consequence of the Dobbs decision is to secure the notion that where, in the preamble of the U.S. Constitution, it says its aim is to "secure the blessings of liberty," that what the Constitution protects is our responsibility to make the right choices. Choice is not the ultimate end, but what we choose. But it's not over. Now we have clarification that it is not moral relativism that our Consti- tution secures, but deeper truths of right and wrong. Now that we know what the Con- stitution does not do, we will find out what our 50 states will choose to do, meaning where the consciences are of the individual citizens in those states, who will determine these out- comes. We are in a place eerily similar to what Douglas wanted regarding slav- er y. Now states will choose yes or no on abortion. In other words, will states decide that the ultimate value is the ability to choose, or is the ulti- mate value what choices are made? Is our ultimate value that a woman have the option to destroy her un- born child, or is our ultimate value sanctity of life? These are the questions before us and that will define who we are as a nation and as a people. Although in the 1850s the countr y was deep- ly divided on the issue of slaver y, one would be hard-pressed today to find anyone who would agree with Douglas that democracy and the vote should decide whether slaver y would be permitted. I predict that histor y will take the same course regarding our increas- ing awareness regarding the sanctity of life and our responsibility to pro- tect the unborn. But clearly, we are in for the long haul. 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." COVID's good news At least the pandemic had a silver lining. It taught parents that there are better alternatives to government schools. When COVID hit, bureaucrats in control were eager to close schools. Many closed them if just one child tested positive, even though COVID is little threat to kids. Union teach- ers seemed eager to be paid not to work. Los Angeles teachers secured a contract that said they will "not be required to teach classes using live video conferencing," and won't be re- quired to "provide instruction more than four hours a day." Nice work if you can get it. More than a million parents chose to leave the government system. They spent their own money to ed- ucate their children in private and religious schools. Others tried home schooling. Many had been skeptical but now discovered that their kids learned more, and their family life was en- riched by teaching at home. The education establishment sneers at home schooling, but home-schooled students, even though they are more likely to be poor, score 30% higher on SAT tests. They also do better in col- lege, and they are less likely to drink or do drugs. Finally, even within government systems, school choice grew. Kansas and Missouri expanded ac- cess to charter schools. Georgia, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Iowa, South Dakota, Utah and Tennessee expanded Edu- cation Savings Accounts, which help parents tr y private schools. Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey signed "the most expansive school choice legislation in the nation." It gives money to families that families can spend on private school, home schooling, micro schools, tutoring or any other educational ser vice that meets the needs of kids. Any kid can qualify. The state simply gives the family what they would have spent in the public school (up to $7,000). That's much more generous and sim- pler than other states choice plans. In San Francisco, voters recalled three school board members. Ap- parently voters did not like that they kept public schools closed and, in- stead of figuring out how to reopen, obsessed over renaming schools called Washington or Lincoln. In Virginia, voters rejected gover- nor Terr y McAuliffe after he said, "I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach." His opponent, Glenn Youngkin said, "Parents should be in charge of their kids' education." Youngkin won. "For far too long in K-12 education, the only special interest group has been the teachers unions," wrote the Reason Foundation's Corey DeAnge- lis in The Wall Street Journal. "Now, there's a new interest group–par- ents. They are never going to unsee what they saw in 2020 and 2021, and they're going to fight to make sure they never feel powerless when it comes to their children's education again." Of course, union leaders hate the choice movement. American Feder- ation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten calls it racist. "The real 'pioneers' of private school choice were the white politicians who re- sisted school integration," she wrote. Today's choice programs are "polite cousins of segregation." But that's nonsense. "Don't tell me school choice is racist!" says Denisha Merriweath- er, founder of the new group Black Minds Matter. "(Choice opponents) are implying that parents, especially lower-income, black parents, should stay trapped in public schools that have failed their children for decades ... We need a new system ... empow- ered by parents." School choice increases diversity, adds Liv Finne of the Washington Policy Center's Center for Education. "Modern-day school vouchers lead to more ethnic and racial integration in the schools, not less." One poll showed that 74% of African Amer- icans and 71% of Latinos support school choice. Choice opponents are mostly unions, establishment Democrats and frightened suburban Republi- cans. But now lots of innovation has be- gun. One example: Stop Foundation 4 Education gives awards to edu- cational innovators. Its $10 million will go to nonprofits, entrepreneurs and community organizations that provide more educational options. Recipients include Rock by Rock, an education software company, Violent crime, like the price of gas, is rising. Not ever yone is expe- riencing this crime wave in the same way. For some, it's a distant issue experienced by other people some- where else. For others, it's a daily life-threatening concern. We parsed the FBI's crime data from 2011 to 2020 (the most recent data available) and found that Afri- can Americans bear an increasingly large share of the harm from crime. African American offenders, mean- while, are committing an increasing- ly large share of violent crimes. For other racial groups, the num- bers are either decreasing (in the case of both white victims and of- fenders), increasing by much small- er amounts, or holding constant. CRIME BY THE NUMBERS According to federal crime data, the number of violent crimes has in- creased by almost 50% over the last 10 years. In 2011, the FBI reported 314,907 violent offenses. In 2020, there were 640,836. The most striking figure in the data is the spike in reported homi- cides, which tripled from 3,549 of- fenses in 2011 to 10,440 offenses in 2020. The picture that federal crime data provide is bad, but the reality of crime in the United States is even worse. The FBI's data is not com- plete. It relies on local law enforce- ment agencies across the countr y to voluntarily share their local data with the FBI. Not all do. In 2020, nearly 3,000 law enforce- ment agencies around the coun- tr y opted not to send the FBI their crime data, leaving 14.8% of law en- forcement agencies, and the crimes committed in their respective ju- risdictions, unaccounted for in the National Incident-Based Reporting System. In truth, violent crime, especially homicide, is worse than the Nation- al Incident-Based Reporting System statistics show. According to other sources, the number of homicides in 2020 was more than double what those statistics report: 21,750. However high the raw numbers are, the upward trend is disturbing. For most types of violent crime tracked by the FBI, the number of of- fenses has more than doubled in the last 10 years. The number of police officers killed feloniously is rising, too. In 2021, 73 were murdered, a 20-year record for the amount of officers killed in the line of duty. The increase in crime, though drastic, has not been steady over the course of the past decade. America witnessed much larger spikes in violent crime in 2020, especially ho- micide, than any of the previous 10 years. WHO SUFFERS? Although the National Inci- dent-Based Reporting System is not complete, it provides useful insights into who suffers from and who com- mits crime because it tracks demo- graphic data about both sets of peo- ple. We utilized the FBI's crime data to compare victim statistics to deter- mine which groups have been most impacted by the rise in violent crime. Factoring out the cases in which the race of the victim was unknown, we calculated who has borne the brunt of the crime wave. For this analysis, violent crime includes assault, homicide, and sex offenses. We found that the increase in these crimes has fallen hardest on black people. From 2011 to 2020 the percentage of violent crime victims who were black increased by 3.2% to reach a peak of 32.7% in 2020. By contrast, the percentage of total victims who were white steadily declined from 69.1% to 64.7% over the same period. For Native Americans and for Asians, the changes were smaller. For the former, the percentage in- creased by 0.3% to compose 1.1% of all victims. The latter saw an increase of 0.4% to compose 1.2% of victims in 2018, which held constant through 2020. When we look at homicide specifical- ly, we see similar trends. The percent- age of total victims who were black rose 2.9% to 54.4% in 2020. For white victims, the percentage fell 3.5% to 43.3% over the same period. Again, with Native Americans and Asians, the changes were much smaller. For the former, the percentage increased 0.4% to 1.1%. For Asians, the rate in- creased by 0.4% to a high of 1.4% in 2018, and then fell by 0.4% back to the 2011 rate of 1% in 2020. The most significant changes, therefore, were that black people represent an increasing share of vio- lent crime victims, and white people a smaller share. It's true that we're dealing in relatively small percent- ages (less than 5%), but when you consider that the number of violent crimes has more than doubled, you realize that these increases are sig- nificant. The true size of the problem is made starker when we consider that African Americans make up only 14.2% of the total population (includ- ing multiracial populations who iden- tify as black "in combination" with another race), but 32.7% of all violent crime victims and 54.4% of homicide victims. Thus, these small percent- ages represent an enormous prob- lem that, for black people, is getting worse, both in relative and absolute terms. WHO'S DOING IT? With race-essentialist rhetoric at a fever pitch bemoaning the omni- presence of white supremacy, some Any aging baby boomer (like my- self) knows that the anthem of the radicals of the 1960s and 1970s was sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. Let the good times roll. Back then, the joke was that a conser vative was some- one who lived in mortal fear that someone, somewhere, was having fun. But if this new generation of au- thoritarian liberals has its way, sex and rock 'n' roll will be illegal. As I've said in the past in these pages, the ironic ideological twist that has occurred over the past 20 years is that the once permissive "live and let live" Left is now the nonpermissive Left. The leftists in America are the new puritans. If you think I'm exagger- ating, consider in just the past few months the laundr y list of things that liberals want to abolish. The same movement that want- ed to legalize almost all drugs now wants to make smoking a menthol cigarette illegal. It's OK to roll a joint, but not a tobacco cigarette. (Just for the record, I am not a smoker — and have never been one.) The Left wants to save the planet by abolishing cars. No, not all cars for now. But if you have a car with a combustible engine that guzzles gasoline or diesel, they are coming after it. Transportation Secretar y Pete Buttigieg wants all new cars to be batter y-operated over the next 10 years. Never mind that Americans have a special love affair with their cars. Polls show by de- cisive margins that we want to decide for our- selves what kind of car we will drive, not leave it up to Uncle Sam. But if the climate change fanatics have their way, your right to choose your own car won't exist. Oh, and by the way, in the Left's Utopian future, there won't be any need for cars for the masses. We will ride around on buses and trains. Only the political elite — the beautiful people — will have cars. Some of the more radical environ- mental groups want to abolish refrig- erators (they use too much energy), light bulbs, guns (of course), straws (they kill dolphins), diving boards at pools (too dangerous), charcoal grills and disposable diapers. They want to regulate the tem- perature on your thermostat in your home in the winter and summer months so you don't use too much energy. They are talking about want- ing to install government-controlled switches so that bureaucrats can set the temperature in your bedroom. The Left wants strict restrictions on how much water can spray out of the nozzle of your shower so that you don't waste water. Now, the latest planetar y vil- lain that needs to be outlawed is ... plastics. On June 30, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law to reduce sharply the use of plastics in ever ything from wa- ter bottles to grocer y bags, containers and packaging. This is the state's solution to the mounting garbage cri- sis that the politicians can't solve. Violators will face fines as high as $50,000 per infrac- tion. The new law sets strict recycling requirements, but apparently, no one told these genius lawmakers that recycling plastics requires huge amounts of energy, and sorr y, that can't happen if you're dependent on wind and solar power. The good news is that at least in America, we still have a right to com- plain openly about these mounting restrictions on the way we live our lives free of a tyrannical govern- ment. But for how long? Liberals will no doubt soon regard columns like this as subversive "hate speech" and abolish this, too. Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at Freedom Works. He is also author of the new book: "Govzilla: How The Relentless Growth of Government Is Devouring Our Economy." Heritage Viewpoint ByBy GianCarlo Canaparo Who suffers the most from crime wave? Eye on the Economy By Stephen Moore The Left wants to abolish everything