The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/1482640
The Press-Dispatch D-3 Wednesday, October 26, 2022 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 We need Republicans to deliver our new leadership As November elections approach, the glaring and deeply troubling headline I see is Americans becoming increas- ingly alienated from their own country. There has never been a greater need for a new generation of leaders to re- store clarity about American principles and plant them in American hearts and minds. The Wall Street Journal reports that all branches of the U.S. military are coming up short in recruiting goals. The U.S. Army will fall short by 25% , meaning 20,000 soldiers. The Air Force and Navy are also falling short. The WSJ offers various technical ex- planations as the source of the recruit- ing problems facing the U.S. military. But most troubling is the observation that, per surveys, "fewer than one in 10 youth are inclined to serve." It makes sense to expect that kids growing up in a country where they are taught that they live in an evil, unjust, racist nation will have diminishing en- thusiasm to put on the uniform, no mat- ter how much they are paid. A Gallup poll from June showed only 38 % of our citizens saying they are "ex- tremely proud" to be an American. This is the lowest since Gallup first did this survey in 2001, when 55% said they are "extremely proud." On a similar note, a new Gallup survey shows trust in all branches of our federal government has cratered. The percentage expressing trust in our judicial branch stands at 47%; in our executive branch, 43%; and in the leg- islative branch, 38 % . It is the first time all three branches of government fell below 50 % in trust. Gallup notes that when it first did this survey in 1972, at least two-thirds expressed trust in each branch of the federal government. This is a leadership crisis. Former Democratic Party congress- woman and presidential candidate Tul- si Gabbard drew attention with her an- nouncement that she is pulling out of the Democratic Party. In an inter- view on Fox with former Republican congressman Trey Gowdy, Gabbard ticked off her complaints about the Democratic Party, including her con- cern that Democrats do not carry the banner for "individual liberties," "lim- ited government" and our "God-given rights enshrined in our Constitution." Some have noted the precedent of Ronald Reagan leaving the Democrat- ic Party. But Reagan left the Democrats and became a Republican. And Gabbard? She says she is now an independent. It's tough to fathom the genuineness of Gabbard's disillusion- ment with her former party, given that she endorsed socialist Bernie Sanders for president in 2016. Reagan articu- lated a clear vision of America, about limited government and individual free- dom, and then fought to capture lead- ership in the Republican Party so the party would become the platform for these ideals. This option certainly is open to Gab- bard. But, no thank you. She's an in- dependent. Americans are disillusioned because too many so-called leaders are playing games with them. We need leaders who understand and feel, at the deep- est level, what our nation is about. A great definition of leadership/heroism that I once read says that it is some- one who embodies "by the cast of des- tiny, the virtue of their whole people in a great hour." Inflation is a sure sign of a corrupt po- litical culture. It begins with irresponsi- ble government spending and printing of money. Alongside our corrupt polit- ical culture is the corruption of our so- ciety with the breakdown of marriage and family, and the disappearance of children. A free society is not about eco- nomic issues or social issues but both. In Reagan's farewell address to the nation he said, "All great change in America begins at the dinner table." He knew that in America, the family passes on the values of freedom. The press wants to focus the coming elections on individual races. This election must be about party. Republicans versus Democrats. Vot- ers need to turn the country back to Republicans and pave the way for new, great American leaders. Star Parker is president of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education and host of the weekly television show "Cure America with Star Parker." Race for the Cure By Star Parker Give Me a Break By John Stossel Obama propaganda It was about eight to 10 years ago that the Left made a unilateral de- cision to shut down all opposition and any skepticism about climate change by pronouncing that the de- bate was over. The "scientific consensus" had been reached, as if sent down on tablets from God, that mankind was causing the rapid warming of the planet. Period. End of argument. Doubters will be denounced as sci- ence deniers and stripped of their science credentials and muzzled by the speech police. This idea of a scientific consen- sus is, of course, the diametric op- posite of what scientific inquiry is all about. It is completely ahistori- cal. History's greatest minds and in- ventors were people who challenged the conventional wisdom of the day. It's an updated version of the Flat Earth Societies in the Middle Ag- es that would imprison those who dared question the scientific con- sensus of the time that the Earth was flat. The Spanish Inquisition tortured heretics who questioned papal orthodoxy. The irony of the modern-day in- quisitionists is that they are the very people who were the doomsayers of the 1970s who have been so consis- tently wrong about the future. These were the people who peddled the "population bomb," which fizzled. They were the ones who said the Earth was cooling and that we were headed into another Ice Age. They were the ones who said we were running out of ener- gy, food and farm- land, and we were headed to a Malthu- sian nightmarish fu- ture. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. You'd think they would be humbled. But they are reiter- ating their certainty that they are the foun- tains of wisdom. And now they are getting dangerous with their heavy-handed tactics to squash dis- sent. Consider what has happened in California - - and soon coming to blue states near you. Democrat- ic Gov. Gavin Newsom just signed a law that will revoke a physician's medical license for conveying "mis- information" (defined as deviation from expert "consensus") about COVID-19 and its treatments. Re- member, by the way, this comes from the same people who said that the scientific consensus was to shut down schools and businesses to stop the spread of COVID-19 and that children as young as five had to be vaccinated - - yet another set of the catastrophic and wrongheaded de- cisions by "the experts." Since when does the government have the right to censor doctors? Whatever happened to doctor-pa- tient confidentiality? Whatever hap- pened to "my body, my choice"? Even Leana Wen, a former leader of Planned Parenthood and Bal- timore's health czar, warns this law "will have a chilling effect on medical practice." She worries that physicians could be suspended or have their licenses revoked "for offering nuanced guidance on a com- plex issue that is hardly settled by existing science." Those accused of "misinformation" would be sub- ject to discipline from the Medical Board of California, 13 of whose 15 members are appointed by none oth- er than Newsom. We should call this the "inquisition panel." These are the political hacks who will decide what transgresses scien- tific consensus. During COVID-19, both the Cen- ters for Disease Control and Preven- tion and Anthony Fauci, the direc- tor of the National Institute of Aller- gy and Infectious Diseases, resem- bled weather vanes as the "scientific consensus" seemed to shift on the pandemic from day to day. Newsom himself first insisted that travel re- strictions were racist and unneces- sary, that masks were superfluous and that California had the infection under control. If his censorship law had been around, would the doctors who disagreed with him have been punished for that? We also now have major social media platforms censoring any skepticism about the effectiveness of the latest vaccines - - even the opinions of major medical experts. Even when skeptics are wrong, they should be able to have their voices heard in a free society. Shouldn't we all be able to agree on that ba- sic truism? If, God forbid, the COVID-19 speech restrictions are upheld by the courts, the next step will be to muzzle "climate misinformation." Bans on free speech aren't far be- hind in this new age of "scientif- ic consensus," which is apparently defined as whatever The New York Times and President Joe Biden's ad- ministration decree the consensus to be. At that point, we can toss the First Amendment into the dustbin of history. This is very scary and danger- ous stuff the Left is imposing on us. Most alarming of all is that al- most no common sense liberals are speaking out against this madness. Have they been muzzled, too? Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and an economist with FreedomWorks. Eye on the Economy By Stephen Moore Left is using science 'consensus' to shut down free speech Netflix is paying Barack and Mi- chelle Obama millions of dollars to produce shows for them. The latest Obama documentary series is "The G Word." "G" for gov- ernment. As Netflix documentaries go, this one is remarkably stupid. It's big-government propaganda. Obama begins by claiming that he does his own income taxes, saying, "It's actually easy." I think he's jok- ing, but it's not clear. "I'm amazing at them," Obama continues hours later. "You can be, too, if you use the helpful tools found at IRS.gov." But that's just silly. It's so complex that millions of us pay to get help. Obama's series is hosted by silly comedian Adam Conover. Conover, correctly, calls himself "an idiot." He uses his time with the former president of the United States to make lame jokes and, at one point, to make sandwiches. He compli- ments Obama on how well he cuts the bread. It's not funny. The series occasionally covers some serious issues - - meat inspec- tion, for example. But instead of hon- est reporting, actors do a skit sug- gesting that, without government, meat companies would sell us dead poisoned rats. "Food regulation was unbeliev- ably successful," concludes Con- over. But food is largely safe today mostly because slaugh- terhouses cleaned themselves up way be- yond what government requires. Companies don't want bad reputa- tions. One company ex- ecutive showed me how they voluntarily do ex- tra things like treat beef carcasses "with rinses and a 185 -de- gree steam vacuum." Also, "equipment is routinely taken completely apart to be swab-tested." By contrast, for 90 years, the U.S. Agriculture Department inspected meat with a crude process called "poke and sniff." Inspectors stuck spikes into carcasses and smelled them. They kept using the same spikes, so they sometimes spread disease. The government only stopped poke and sniff in the 1990s. A few times, Obama's series ad- mits that government agencies mess things up. Conover mocks FEMA, "not a name you normally hear after the words 'did a great job.'" No, but he then claims FEMA fails because it's underfunded, saying, "How ma- ny lives could have been saved if FEMA had had the resources they needed? " That's ridiculous. FEMA doesn't fail because it lacks resourc- es. U.S. disaster relief funds have in- creased by billions. FE- MA fails because it's a government bureau- cracy, and bureaucra- cies do wasteful things, like bring bottles of wa- ter to hurricane victims but then leave them at an airport. The private sector is more efficient. "The G Word" sneers at what it calls, "this philosophy that the free market should be trusted over the government." But Walmart donates supplies much more efficiently than FEMA. They employ sophisticated weather tracking that helps them determine what assets are needed where. They get things to people be- cause they lose money if they don't. Obama's series smears those of us who are skeptical of government handouts. "In the wake of the civil rights movement," claims Conover, "some Americans began to resent the fact that the government was now providing assistance to black and brown citizens." What? We didn't resent welfare because we're racists. We objected because it created a new permanent underclass. Handouts, President Ronald Rea- gan explained correctly, "discour- age work." So Obama's documenta- ry depicts Reagan as a vicious sur- geon cutting valuable government agencies, throwing them into a bucket labeled "free market." But government wasn't cut under Reagan. Federal spending went up during his terms. It always goes up. At one point, the excesses were so grotesque that President Bill Clin- ton said, "The era of big government is over." But it wasn't. It only grows. Today it's bigger than ever. That's fine, says Conover, because Washington rescued us during the COVID shutdowns with "stimulus checks, small business loans and corporate tax breaks! " They don't mention how much of that money was stolen or that their spending orgy brought 8 % inflation. For three hours, Obama and his sidekick say government should do more. Whatever the problem, their answer is always more government and more money. Maybe someday a president will point out that government has no money of its own and that spending more than you have is a road to ruin.