The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/833973
The Press-Dispatch Wednesday, June 7, 2017 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 A newspaper reporter recently tracked me down and interviewed me about a very unhappy anniver- sary at my former workplace. Twen- ty years ago, a transient young Cal- ifornia man raped and murdered a seven-year-old girl whose preoc- cupied father and teenage brother were no more than 20 or 30 yards away. I've written about that pre- viously, and won't repeat it here. However, I think it's worth discussing how the newspaper missed an opportunity to illumi- nate a dark corner of current poli- cies that will surely result in simi- lar future attacks. The attack occurred in a ca- sino, and the newspaper recalls that the murder started a nation- al conversation about casino se- curity. Indeed, it did. But casinos were among the most intensely policed civilian American spaces, and there were surveillance cam- eras everywhere. Well paid, well trained operators were watching camera monitors around the clock. Jeremy Strohmeyer defeat- ed the formidable casino surveil- lance system and reg- ular security patrols by following his prey into the ladies' room, where he strangled and raped her in the privacy of a restroom stall. The un- fettered right of males to enter women's rest- rooms is now asserted as a fundamental right by executives of Target Corporation, the National Football League, the National Collegiate Athletic Association and the Na- tional Basketball Association. When state legislatures passed or proposed laws restricting men from intruding in women's rest- rooms, this athletic cartel threat- ened the states with loss of lucra- tive games and tournaments in retaliation. In North Carolina, the legislature finally relented and passed a repeal measure – call it Jeremy's Law – to the sport exec- utives' liking. David Cash Jr. accompanied his friend Strohmey- er to the casino, and followed him into the ladies' restroom. He didn't participate in the assault, but didn't intervene or report it, either. He was never prosecuted. He was accepted into Berke- ley, graduated with an engineering de- gree, and is apparently having a nice career at a California utility. My state and California later en- acted laws criminalizing behavior like Cash's, but only as to specif- ic ongoing or imminent attacks against children. It remained le- gal for corporate executives and Obama Justice Department offi- cials to replicate Cash's behavior on a grander scale, indifferent to large numbers of anonymous vic- tims. Last week's column centered upon how three individuals who had legitimate reasons to hate due to the injustices of war were transformed by Christ. Allow me to present one more story; this is about Christ in the midst of war. In 2012, a book titled A High- er Calling was published, and was hailed as a reminder that humanity can shake off its embrace of death in its darkest hour. The author speaks of chivalry and a code of honor, but in doing so, this secular- ist misses the presence of Christ. Chivalry is a code developed in the medieval period by the Church to limit ravaging of inno- cents. Whether the code is in itself moral is not the issue here. The code arose in Europe as a means to make warfare humane. The story is about Lt. Charlie Brown who is on his first mission and is flying a mangled B-17 back to Britain; his nemesis is Fighter Pilot Lt. Franz Stigler flying a ME 109 and seeking his 40th kill and the coveted Iran Cross. The story is not so much about Brown; it is about Stigler, and the secularists miss the significance of his early life. His mother and father raised Stigler in church. He loved to fly and was one of the best commercial pilots in Germany before the war. He was a pilot's- pilot. He trained as a fight- er pilot, and his men- tors drilled into him a code: we destroy ma- chines. He was taught that it was uncivilized to kill a defenseless man who had bailed out of his plane. His tutors told him that they would personal- ly shoot him down if they ever saw him strafe a man who had bailed out of his plane. As the war progresses, Stigler began to lose his desire for the Iron Cross and the accolades of his comrades. His brother was killed on takeoff on a bombing raid [1940], and he agonized over his death. He found out his broth- er had doubts about the war. Sti- gler was slowly becoming tired of the destruction. Then came the bombing raid on Bremen Germany on 20 Decem- ber 1943, and his rendezvous with Lt. Brown. Stigler noticed as he approached the plane that there was no defensive fire, and he quickly real- ized the plane had no real defenses. He flew within 20 feet of the plane and looked inside. The tail gun- ner lay gruesome- ly dead. Several men were wounded, and he could see the blood on the floor of the exposed fuselage, The plane in his estimation would not make it back to Eng- land. Stigler made hand signals to Brown that should land the plane and surrender or fly to neu- tral Sweden. Brown politely waved back, but it was Britain or bust. Stigler had to make a decision; force the plane down or allow it to fly to its "fate;" he followed Brown to the Baltic Sea, and as he turned back toward Germany said to him- self, "You're in God's Hands now." Stigler faced court-martial and execution if it were discovered that he allowed a heavy bomber to es- cape. He kept it to himself. Continued on page 2 Continued on page 2 Continued on page 2 Minority View by Walter E. Williams Pursuit of the Cure by Star Parker Overpopulation hoax Points to Ponder by Rev. Ford Bond Remembering the life and power of Christ - Part II A tragic anniversary Lucid Moments by Bart Stinson America's safety net makes people dependent Heritage Viewpoint by Edwin J. Feulner When conservatives call for Congress to cut federal spending and shrink the size of government, they're often portrayed as heart- less. On the contrary: We remember our heritage. We know there's ac- tually nothing "progressive" at all about the nanny state. Indeed, it's regressive. It's a betrayal of our history as a nation built on self-re- liance. We owe our republic, after all, to the energy and exertions of rugged individuals — pilgrims who crossed the perilous sea in frail ships to brave a wilderness, pioneers who slogged thousands of miles through hostile territory and prevailed against all odds. They had no subsidies, no guar- antees, no government help save for raw public land they painful- ly developed by hard labor. They shared what they had, helped one another, and took turns standing guard to protect against danger. They wanted to be free, and they build the freest country in history. Self-reliance, Alexis de Toc- queville observed in his landmark work "Democracy in America," was the or- ganizing principle of American life, cul- ture, and politics in the 19th century. To- day, however, our na- tion seems to have re- versed Tocqueville's admiring formulation and become a nanny state in which more and more individuals depend on government to do not only what they can't do for themselves, but far too much else. Sure, there are plenty of hard- working Americans still around. But unlike our predecessors, ma- ny other present-day Americans show little or no interest in rely- ing on their own mind and muscle to surmount obstacles. Since the 1930s, generations have grown up accustomed to depending on gov- ernment as their first line of de- fense against not only serious trou- ble, but also the common vicissi- tudes of ordinary life. Think of the chores we expect our public servants to perform with all the panache of brave first respond- ers tackling a terror- ist attack. If you lock your keys inside your car, can't coax your cat down from a tree, or feel insulted by a surly cabdriver, what do you do? Many milquetoasts in 21st century America call 911 and demand action by some hapless fire company or overworked po- lice department. The nanny state has conditioned vast numbers of us to view near- ly any setback as a federal case. If you can't pay your debts, tax- es or tuition; if you can't afford health insurance, rebuild your beach house after a hurricane, or save your business from your own follies, never fear — some feder- In 1798, Thomas Malthus wrote "An Essay on the Principle of Pop- ulation." He predicted that man- kind's birthrate would outstrip our ability to grow food and would lead to mass starvation. Malthus' wrong predictions did not deter Stanford University professor Paul Ehrlich from making a simi- lar prediction. In his 1968 best-sell- er, "The Population Bomb," which has sold more than 2 million cop- ies, Ehrlich warned: "The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of mil- lions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs em- barked upon now." This hoax re- sulted in billions of dollars being spent to fight overpopulation. According to the standard un- derstanding of the term, human overpopulation occurs when the ecological footprint of a human population in a specific geograph- ical location exceeds the carrying capacity of the place occupied by that group. Let's look at one aspect of that description – namely, pop- ulation density. Let's put you, the reader, to a test. See whether you can tell which country is richer and which is poorer just by knowing two countries' population density. North Korea's population den- sity is 518 people per square mile, whereas South Korea's is more than double that, at 1,261 people per square mile. Hong Kong's pop- ulation density is 16,444, whereas Somalia's is 36. Congo has 75 peo- ple per square mile, whereas Sin- gapore has 18,513. Looking at the gross domestic products of these countries, one would have to be a lunatic to believe that smaller population density leads to great- er riches. Here are some GDP da- ta expressed in millions of U.S. dol- lars: North Korea ($17,396), South Korea ($1,411,246), Hong Kong ($ 320,668), Somalia ($5,707), Congo ($41,615) and Singapore ($296,967). The overpopulation hoax has led to horrible population control programs. The United Nations Population Fund has helped gov- ernments deny women the right to choose the number and spac- ing of their children. Overpopula- tion concerns led China to enact a brutal one-child policy. Forced sterilization is a method of popu- lation control in some countries. Nearly a quarter-million Peruvian women were sterilized. Our gov- ernment, through the U.N. Popu- lation Fund, is involved in "popula- tion moderation" programs around the world, including in India, Ban- gladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria, Mex- ico, Indonesia, Brazil, the Philip- pines, Thailand, Egypt, Turkey, Ethiopia and Colombia. The entire premise behind popu- lation control is based on the faulty logic that humans are not valuable resources. The fact of business is that humans are what the late Ju- lian L. Simon called the ultimate resource. That fact becomes ap- parent by pondering this question: Why is it that Gen. George Wash- ington did not have cellphones to communicate with his troops and rocket launchers to sink British ships anchored in New York Har- bor? Surely, all of the physical re- sources – such as aluminum al- loys, copper, iron ore and chemical propellants – necessary to build cellphones and rocket launchers were around during Washington's time. In fact, they were around at the time of the cave man. There is only one answer for why cell- phones, rocket launchers and mil- lions of other things are around today but were not around yester- year. The growth in human knowl- edge, human ingenuity, job spe- cialization and trade led to indus- trialization, which, coupled with personal liberty and private prop- erty rights, made it possible. Hu- man beings are valuable resourc- es, and the more we have of them the better. The greatest threat to man- kind's prosperity is government, not population growth. For exam- ple, Zimbabwe was agriculturally rich but, with government inter- ference, was reduced to the brink of mass starvation. Any country faced with massive government interference can be brought to starvation. Blaming poverty on overpopulation not only lets gov- ernments off the hook but also en- courages the enactment of harm- Trump budget fixes our broken culture See HOA X on page 2 See BUDGET on page 2 George Mason University econ- omist Tyler Cowen has just pub- lished a timely new book, "The Complacent Class: The Self-De- feating Quest for the American Dream." Cowen's message is that Ameri- ca is a nation that has lost its edge. Entrepreneurism and the will- ingness to take risks – key factors that once defined the American economy and made it the growth engine of the world – are in de- cline. Income is stagnating; produc- tivity is down; startups as a per- centage of overall business activity is down; the percentage of Amer- icans under 30 who own a business is less than half of where it stood in the 1980s; the percentage of Americans who stay in the same job is up; the interstate migration rate declined 51 percent from the 1970s to 2013. Cowen attributes this stagna- tion to a complacency that now grips our culture. He offers a num- ber of explanations, but key fac- tors include adversity to risk and a sense that a society can be cre- ated in which risk is eliminated. It's a dangerous illusion and we're paying a dear price for it. Cowen's book is timely. It has arrived at the same moment that President Trump has submitted his new budget to congress. It's a courageous budget de- signed to turn around a ship of state that is sinking from fiscal excess. What's the connection to Cow- en's book? Our federal budget is bloated with social spending pro- grams that have expanded mas- sively over the years, whose real objective is to take any risk out of life. Few would argue that the gov- ernment should provide some tem- porary safety net for citizens that fall on hard times. But these spending programs aren't that. They are the prod- uct of an illusion, the result of a culture of rampant materialism, that all of life is a social engineer- ing problem. If designed correct- ly, the thinking goes, society can purr like a well-oiled machine with all pain and suffering engineered out of it. This great lie is bankrupting us and producing a culture of victim- hood, and, as Cowen defines it, complacency. Regarding our federal bud- get, here's what the Congressio- nal Budget Office says: "If cur- rent laws remain generally un- changed, the United States would face steadily increasing federal budget deficits and debt over the next 30 years – reaching the high- est level of debt relative to GDP ever experienced in this country. ...The prospect of such large debt poses substantial risks for the na- tion..." Liberals are crying about "cru- el" budget cuts in the Trump bud- get. But as Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the Manhattan Institute points out, what liberals call "cuts" are not cuts at all – they merely slow the rate of spending. The Trump budget increases federal spending over 10 years by $1.7 trillion. Medicaid, one of the largest items in the federal budget, in- creases from $ 378 billion in cur- rent spending to $524 billion. Not exactly a cut. And consider that Medicaid spending in 2000 was $118 billion. Or consider food stamps. Spend- ing has increased from $18 billion in 2000 to $71 billion now. Or So- cial Security Disability spending, that has increased from $56 bil- lion in 2000 to $144 billion. Re- forms are being proposed to add a work requirement to qualify for these programs. American Enterprise Insti- tute economist Mark Perry notes that direct payments to individu- als have increased from less than 30 percent of the federal budget to 70 percent today. He says that the federal government has essen- tially transformed into a "gigantic wealth-transfer machine." We should see the Trump bud- get as a cultural as well as fiscal