The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/680901
The Press-Dispatch Wednesday, May 18, 2016 D-1 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 Americans are accustomed to political mudslinging. As the pri- mary season comes to a close, most people are feeling saturated and bloated with the political rhet- oric of the presidential primaries. Scarcely a day has gone by without new charges and counter charges flying faster than a golf ball in a sudden death playoff. I read where one opponent char- acterized the other as a "hideous hermaphroditical character which has neither the force nor firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman." His opponent responded, "Are you prepared to see your dwell- ings in flames…female chasti- ty violated… children writhing on the pike? GREAT GOD OF COMPASSION AND JUSTICE, SHIELD MY COUNTRY FROM DESTRUCTION." These allegations were part of the election of 1828 between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jack- son. Negative campaigning has been used since before John Adams to accuse a candidate of every aber- rant behavior under the sun. Terms thrown at opponents from past campaigns read like a thesaurus describ- ing a debauched soul: grafter, depraved, cro- ny, deranged, commu- nist, traitor, miscege- nist, polygamist, liar, adulterer, drunkard, fascist, misogynist, nuts, stupid, demagog- ic, animalistic, incom- petent, mental, nudist and atheist. This election cycle has been no different. Most of the modern "vetting" process focuses on the darker side of human behavior rather than up- on a candidates strength. Just think if your life were scru- tinized and dissected like most po- litical candidates; how would you fair? To put things into perspective the Psalm rightly reminded the faithful, "If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand? " Christians are taught that no one is perfect: "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." It is for this reason that Christ came to redeem us from the con- federacy of sin and death. We still teach our children that certain behaviors such as ly- ing, stealing, killing, coveting, and immor- al sexual acts, are wrong. These aber- rant behaviors are uni- versal and are found in various forms among every people and cultures on earth. These universal laws have tak- en a beating as courts and juries accord people a right to engage in deviant and criminal behavior. [Is there any such thing as deviance in our world today?] The Psalmist tells us to: "Con- sider the blameless, observe the upright; a future awaits those who seek peace." Luke's parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector reminds us how self-deceptive we can become- "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other Continued on page 2 Continued on page 2 Continued on page 2 Observations by Thomas Sowell The Weekly by Alden Heuring Dry rot in academia Continued on page 2 Points to Ponder by Rev. Ford Bond God doesn't sling mud Leftists have become the authoritarians Paul Ryan should not support Trump Heritage Viewpoint by Edwin J. Feulner Pursuit of the Cure by Star Parker Jason Riley has now joined the long and distinguished list of peo- ple invited – and then disinvited – to give a talk on a college campus, in this case Virginia Tech. Mr. Riley is a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a colum- nist for the Wall Street Journal and, perhaps most relevantly, au- thor of a very insightful book titled "Please Stop Helping Us: How Lib- erals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed." In short, Jason Riley's views on race are different from the views that prevail on most college cam- puses. At one time, 50 years ago or earlier, exposing students to a different viewpoint was considered to be a valuable part of their educa- tion. But that was before academia – and the education system in gen- eral – became virtually a monopo- ly of the political left. Today one can literally go from kindergarten to becoming a grad- uate student seeking a Ph.D., with- out ever hearing a vision of the world that conflicts with the vi- sion of the left. Conservative critics who object on grounds that the views of the left are wrong miss the point. Re- gardless of whose views become a monopoly, education suffers. John Stuart Mill understood this back in the middle of the 19th century. As a young Marxist in college during the 1950s heyday of the an- ti-Communist crusade led by Sen- ator Joseph McCarthy, I had more freedom to express my views in class, without fear of retaliation, than conservative students have on many campuses today. A fter being invited by conserva- tive students to give talks at vari- ous colleges, Jason Riley has then been surprised at how little those conservative students have said during the question and answer periods after these talks. But a Wellesley student explained: "You get to leave when you're done. We have to live with these people un- til we graduate." Even liberal professors can be adversely affected by the narrow groupthink that prevails. With- out an opposition to keep them on their toes, they can develop slop- py habits of dismissing or even demonizing differing viewpoints, instead of practicing and teach- ing their students how to come to grips with opposing beliefs. A well-known Harvard profes- sor, for example, recently referred to Justice Clarence Thomas by re- marking: "He'll say he pulled him- self up by his own bootstraps. I say I was in the right place at the right time." It so happens that I first met Clarence Thomas back in 1978, when he was a young lawyer in Missouri. In all these years, I have never heard him say anything even resembling what has been blithely attributed to him by this Harvard professor. On the contrary, Justice Thom- as has attributed his good fortune to his grandfather who raised him, especially in his autobiography, "My Grandfather's Son." When he was sworn in as a Jus- tice of the Supreme Court, he brought the nuns who had taught him in school, down in Georgia, to the ceremony in Washington, at his own expense, to let them know that what they had done for him was appreciated, and had not been in vain. There is no reason why our Har- vard professor has to agree with Justice Thomas' judicial philoso- phy or his social views. But, as the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan once put it: "You're entitled to your own opinions, but you're not entitled to your own facts." It was much the same story when a faculty member at the Uni- versity of California at Santa Bar- bara referred to economist Walter Williams as someone "committed to the welfare of the top few." It so happens that I have known Walter Williams since 1969. In all those years, I have never once known him to express the slightest concern for the welfare of rich peo- ple. But what I have seen repeated- ly has been his expressing his con- cern for people who are poor, both in words and in deeds. As an economist, Professor Wil- liams knows that high tax rates on investors chase investments – and American jobs – overseas, where Do you support free speech, in- dividual liberties and protections for private property? You must be a liberal. Did that last sentence cause you to do a double take? I'm not surprised. I've been reading a new book, "The Closing of the Liberal Mind," and it shows that much of what passes for liberalism to- day is, historically speaking, any- thing but. Moreover, many who call themselves conservative to- day would have been considered "liberal" if they lived in the time of the Founding Fathers. This distinction isn't mere se- mantics, however. The shift I'm describing goes right to the heart of the political and culture wars that rage around us today. Au- thor Kim Holmes demonstrates why the authoritarian stance ad- opted by many liberals today — as exemplified by speech codes, trigger warnings, boycotts and shaming rituals — is in fact more accurately described as illiber- alism. You don't have to go back to the days of the Enlighten- ment, John Locke and the French Revolution (as Mr. Holmes, a former U.S. assistant sec- retary of state, does in his commendably thorough book) to see this trend at work. Consider the following quote from a famous politician. See if you can guess who said it and when: "I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this adminis- tration, somehow you're not pa- triotic. We should stand up and say, 'We are Americans, and we have a right to debate and dis- agree with any administration'." John McCain talking about President Obama? Nope. That's Hillary Clinton. She said it in 2003, in reference to the George W. Bush administra- tion. But as they say, that was then, and this is now. Appar- ently it's patriotic to express your oppo- sition to President Bush, but if you utter a word against Pres- ident Obama, you're a lying, racist bigot. And if you deny it? Well, that's just what we would expect a big- ot like you to say. And so most of today's liber- als (or "postmodern leftists," to use Mr. Holmes' preferred term) are not championing the right to offer opposing views, as their in- tellectual forebears would have done. They're suppressing them. This campaign to stamp out dissent takes many forms. We see it in Internal Revenue Ser- SUBSCRIBE TODAY! 812-354-8500 We're not afraid to shed some light on the truth. The push back against Donald Trump is about far more than Re- publican "elites" at war with Re- publican voters, which is what some claim. They say that Trump captured the strong anti-establishment sen- timents of voters and that an en- trenched Washington establish- ment won't accept this new reality. Understand that Trump, a man with ambition and no principles, is not anti-establishment. "Estab- lishment" is not about whether you work in politics or live in Washing- ton. It is about the unprincipled, promiscuous use of power to ad- vance personal interests, with dis- regard for any sense of truth and integrity, or the national welfare. This is Donald Trump. A fter becoming a Christian conservative many years ago, I became a Republican to fight for limited government and tradition- al values. As a former welfare mother, who saw her communities being destroyed by the Democrat left- wing agenda, I fought for welfare reform. As result, I was invited to speak at the Republican National Convention in 1996. During the same time period, Donald Trump was making most of his political contributions to Dem- ocrats and to the Dem- ocratic Party. This in- cluded Trump's sup- port for Harlem's Charlie Rangel, the Black Caucus Democrat who represented everything that was destroying America's minority communities. A fter years of work with black clergy to get them to understand that conservative principles are what are needed in their commu- nities, how could I possibly sup- port a Republican candidate with a history of lawsuits related to rac- ist business practices? Or how can I support a candi- date who has good things to say about Planned Parenthood, the nation's number one provider of abortions, that specifically tar- gets minority wom- en? Or, when family breakdown is rampant in the nation, how can I support a Republican candidate who thinks traditional family val- ues aren't vitally im- portant or a priority? How can I, or any Republican, support a candidate who not only has no respect for the sanctity of life and family, but also no regard for private property? Conservatives uniformly con- demned the Supreme Court's Ke- lo decision in 2005, which ratio- nalized government confiscating private property to implement de- velopment plans of commercial de- velopers. According to the Cato Institute, Parent party There's no going back. I've crossed the Rubicon and now I'm a bona fide old person. I knew for sure last weekend at a good friend's annual spring fling. It started as a group of high school- ers and college kids getting to- gether around a bonfire, but this year, a group of parents sat around a living room and watched their small children chew on Duplos. And I was one of them. (I was one of the parents, not one of the small children. I did play with the Duplos just a little though.) On the one hand, it would be easy for me to look at this as the end of freedom, the end of being young and sexy (ha), the end of late nights, etc. etc. A fter all, who spends an entire party just sitting around and talking about which baby wrap is the most comfortable of all baby wraps? Without even reaching a definitive conclusion? Well, we do, apparently, and you know what? It was a great party. Being married and having kids makes what little time you have for socializing so much easier. You've always got something to talk about (your kids), something to do (watch your kids), and ev- eryone's on the same page—we all just want to relax and let our kids babysit each other for a little while. We all have a purpose now (raising our kids), so we're not un- der any pressure to find some sort of purpose in our social lives any- more. I mean, look at what young adults get together and do these days. Playing video games at the professional level? Loitering in re- tail stores? Forming startup cor- porations? When you don't have a clear purpose in life, it's much harder to decide what to do with your time. Anyway, I was thoroughly pleased by my first parent-party experience. All of my old school friends have grown up to be great parents, and they've all made some great kids. (Okay, not all of my friends have kids yet. Sorry guys! Wait, do my friends even read my column? I should poll my friends about that. Maybe move up the ones who read it in my speed di- al. Then again—oh never mind!) One of the little tykes at the par- ty was about two, and according to her parents, obsessed with babies. ( Which is perfect, because we brought our baby.) She kept saying "Baby! " and giving our kid toys to chew on. Good stuff. Perhaps my favorite kid belonging to someone else that night though was a stur- dily-built little fella who's crawling but not exactly talking yet. This guy was a party animal. He started out riding on his dad's back while his dad played a spirited game of ping-pong with our gracious host. Then he crawled around and stole Duplos from his older sisters when they weren't looking. A fter dinner, he took an interest in me and tried to crawl up my front side. Eventu- ally, he contented himself with giv- ing me the toys he'd been stealing earlier. We weren't able to stay too late at the parent party, much to my dis- may, but it was a great play date for the kiddos. If this is what be- ing old feels like, I can make my peace with it.