The Press-Dispatch
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The Press-Dispatch Wednesday, June 14, 2017 C-5 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 Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse ap- peared on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" show to promote his new book, "The Vanishing Ameri- can Adult: Our Coming of Age Cri- sis – And How To Build a Culture of Self Reliance." Surely Sasse didn't expect this routine publicity spot for his book to turn into a media storm. But thanks to Bill Maher's infamous and irreverent mouth, this is what happened. Maher, of course, makes his liv- ing being irreverent. But now he has discovered that even a rich left-wing provocateur has lines he can't cross. And using the classic word of black denigra- tion – the N-word – is one of them. Now he has apologized – sure- ly not out of any personal remorse but out of career damage control. Whether he will pay a price for his casual exploitation of the pain of others remains to be seen. Re- gardless, we should ask if there is something to learn here. Maher did Senator Sasse a kind of favor. His behavior was adver- tisement for the rele- vance of Sasse's book. Sasse discusses in this book what he sees as a trend in America toward "perpetual ad- olescence" – a deferral of the transition from child to adult. He is not talking about biological adult- hood. He is talking about cultural adulthood. It's about taking responsibility for one's life and, in an even broad- er sense, for the challenge of liv- ing. We come into this world as ego- ists. Everything revolves around us. Growing up involves discover- ing that the world is about more than me, that there are others, and that we are all part of something greater than ourselves. But this is really exactly the op- posite frame of mind that our so- ciety today supports. Instead, the values our culture tends to celebrate and encourage are those of the perpetual ad- olescence that Ben Sasse talks about. Everything is about me – my wants, my claims, my rights. A Gallup poll from last month bears the headline "Americans Hold Record Liberal Views On Most Moral Issues." Positive responses are at record highs for the moral acceptability of birth control (91 percent), divorce (73 percent), sex between an un- married man and woman (69 per- cent), homosexual relations (63 percent), out-of-wedlock birth (62 percent), abortion (43 percent), pornography (36 percent). Despite the overwhelming evi- dence correlating traditional fam- ily life with personal health and Our world today is aflame with hatred and sorrow. Unfortunately, much of that is a result of religious xenophobia and intolerance. In a broad sense, all religions have beliefs, dogmas, and a host of do's and don'ts that guide the adherent to the Promised Land. In addition, religions have rituals that must be submitted to in order be guaranteed a place in eternity. Look about and study the re- ligions of the world, and within each, there is a concept or teach- ing that we are detached from God, and each has a way to bridge that gap within us. From the beginning of creation, God was interested in relationship. The Book of Genesis reveals that God created man for fellowship, and He was the crown of all cre- ation. God would walk in the cool of the morning and talk with Ad- am and Eve. God's family was giv- en one command, and they failed to obey that: "Do not eat of the fruit of the tree of 'good and evil' for in the day that you do, you shall die." These few verses from the Old Testament tells humanity why there is suffering, conflict, dis- ease, and death. Adam rebelled against God and committed sin, and his descendants have been suffering since then. Without controver- sy, there is something innate within us that we aspire to break the rules. Twentieth cen- tury psychologists suggest humanity has a death wish or innate aggression which ac- counts for war and conflict. What the secularists reject is the human family is a spirit being; we were created to worship God and enjoy his creation. Secularists and humanist fill that emptiness with self-actualiza- tion, altruism, philanthropy, and moral living, which cannot bridge the loss because the soul of man- kind yearns for a transcendent and spiritual union with God. Daily all of us are bombarded with mass culture that attempts to fill the emptiness of the soul with work, family, sports, and entertain- ment to name a few. No mental or emotional/physiological high will change the essence of mankind because we continue to do what comes naturally: sin. That all changed with the birth of the Son of God, Je- sus Christ. Jesus did give com- mands: love one anoth- er; love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind, and with all thy strength; give and it shall be given unto you; do unto oth- ers as you would have them do unto you; forgive others their sins. All of what Jesus taught dealt with relationships. Jesus was the personification of the old adage "like father-like son." Examine the life of Christ. What one finds is Jesus is doing as He had seen His Father do. He grants mercy, extolls grace, extends for- giveness, forgives sin, and teach- es the way to reconciliation with God is believe on the one whom He sent [Christ]. Jesus points to his Father as good, who allows the rain to fall upon the just and unjust. His fa- ther desires that no person per- Continued on page 6 Continued on page 6 Continued on page 6 Continued on page 6 Minority View by Walter E. Williams The Weekly by Alden Heuring Democrats' hoodwinking of blacks Points to Ponder by Rev. Ford Bond Father's Day is about a relationship Bill Maher and perpetual adolescence Pursuit of the Cure by Star Parker Afghanistan must not be abandoned Heritage Viewpoint by Edwin J. Feulner Chances are, you heard plenty about the latest terrorist attacks in Britain. But the chances that you heard about the most recent attack in A fghanistan — in which a sui- cide truck bomber set off his dead- ly payload in rush-hour traffic near the German embassy in Kabul — are much lower. Why? Perhaps it's a natural conse- quence of news overload when it comes to terrorism. When such attacks become common, it takes a lot to cut through the headline clutter and make an impression. Or it could be because the war in A fghanistan has gone on for so long that we're experiencing sim- ple news fatigue about it. Such fatigue can lead peo- ple to lose sight of why the Unit- ed States is in that country in the first place, let alone why we should remain. "Why Are We Still in A f- ghanistan? " reads the headline of a June 5 CBS News commentary, while the one on a June 3 Washing- ton Examiner flatly states: "The U.S. Can't Fix A fghanistan, and It Should Stop Trying." Part of the problem can sure- ly be traced to shift- ing war aims, as de- fense expert Luke Coffey ably demon- strates in a June 1 ar- ticle for The National Interest. In the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, our aim was pret- ty straightforward: to deny al Qaeda a safe haven from which to launch terror- ist attacks, and to remove the ter- rorist-harboring Taliban from pow- er. Once that was accomplished, the focus morphed into nation- building and "bringing democra- cy." However laudable this may sound, though, a fundamental problem lurks: How do you mea- sure success? And so, 16 years lat- er, the question of why we're there inevitably arises. Thousands of troops have been killed, Mr. Cof- fey notes, and nearly $1 trillion spent. Should we still be in A f- ghanistan? In a word, yes. Al- though we can point to some concrete suc- cess — the violence in A fghanistan is way down, and al Qaeda was indeed denied its safe haven — we need to consider what au- thor and military ex- pert James Carafa- no calls the strategic consequence of failure. He points to three reasons the U.S. needs to be there. One is that we're currently wag- ing a crucial fight to crush ISIS in the Middle East, a fight that is suc- ceeding. The last thing we need at this juncture is to pull back from A fghanistan and yield new hunt- ing grounds to embattled terror- ist groups. We can't allow A fghan- istan to revert to its pre-September 11 environment once again. Second, we don't want to con- Ask any black person which po- litical party has been black peo- ple's political ally. With near una- nimity, blacks would answer the Democratic Party. Asked which political party has been hostile to blacks, they'd say the Repub - lican Party with similar unanim- ity. For better answers, check out Prager University's five-min- ute clip "The Inconvenient Truth About the Democratic Party," by Carol Swain, professor of politi- cal science at Vanderbilt Universi- ty (http://tinyurl.com/kq3gxuw). Since its founding in the late 1820s, the Democratic Party has defended slavery, started the Civ- il War and opposed Reconstruc- tion. The Democratic Party im- posed segregation. Its members engaged in the lynchings of blacks and opposed the civil rights acts of the 1950s and '60s. During Recon- struction, hundreds of black men were elected to Southern state leg- islatures as Republicans, and 22 black Republicans served in the U.S. Congress by 1900. The Dem- ocratic Party did not elect a black man to Congress until 1935. President Woodrow Wilson was a Progressive Democrat and an avowed racist who shared ma- ny views with the Ku Klux Klan. He resegregated the federal civ- il service. He screened the racist film "The Birth of a Nation," origi- nally titled "The Clansman," at the White House; it was the very first movie ever played at the White House. What was the party of Orval Faubus, the Arkansas governor who blocked the desegregation of Little Rock schools and defied the U.S. Supreme Court's unani- mous 1954 Brown v. Board of Edu- cation decision? What was the par- ty of Theophilus Eugene Connor, known as Bull Connor, who, as city commissioner, set vicious dogs, fire hoses and billy clubs on black civil rights demonstrators in Bir- mingham, Alabama? Connor said: "You can never whip these birds if you don't keep you and them separate. I found that out in Bir- mingham. You've got to keep your white and black separate." If you answered that Faubus and Connor were Democrats, go to the head of the class. By the way, it was Repub- lican President Dwight D. Eisen- hower who sent troops to ensure that black students could attend Little Rock's Central High School. What was the political party of Alabama Gov. George Wallace, who, during the 1960s civil rights movement, declared that he stood for "segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forev- er" and blocked black students from entering the University of Alabama? A few years later, the only se- rious congressional opposition to the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 came from Democrats. Eighty percent of Republicans in the House of Representatives sup- ported the bill. Less than 70 per- cent of Democrats did. Democratic senators, led by ex-Klansman Rob- ert Byrd's 14-hour filibuster, kept the bill tied up for 75 days, until Re- publicans mustered enough votes to break the filibuster. Labor unions have always been allied with the Democratic Party and have a history of racism. Most of today's black leaders give un- questioned support to labor unions and their policies that harm black workers, but yesteryear's black leaders saw things differently. Frederick Douglass, in his 1874 essay "The Folly, Tyranny, and Wickedness of Labor Unions," ar- gued that unions were not friends of blacks. W.E.B. Du Bois called unions "the greatest enemy of the black working man." Booker T. Washington also opposed unions because of their adverse impact on blacks. Today, Democrats use diploma- cy to hoodwink blacks. They tell blacks to be against those – such as Education Secretary Betsy De- Vos – who are for school vouchers that enable black parents to get their children out of rotten schools run by Democrats at the Nation- al Education Association. Dem- ocrats are using black congress- men to go after Milwaukee Coun- ty Sheriff David Clarke, who is a Summer of change PUZZLED ABOUT WHAT TO READ? ..and you will have your solution. subscribe to 812-354-8500 If there's one thing I like about summer, it's summer festivals. This will be a good year to take Flannery to at least one of the ma- ny fests near where we live; she'll be able to try some of the food and walk around with us a bit if we go. Getting paid to attend festi- vals is probably one of my favor- ite things about working at a news- paper. Though I've forgotten some of it, I developed a hit list over the years of the best fest food, and I al- ways try at least one new thing ev- ery year. This year I want to make sure I get a lemon shake-up with tea in it, a funnel cake, a fried pick- le, some quesadillas to go, home- made ice cream, bratwurst, taffy, a steakburger... I know there's a few things I'll remember I need once I see them, too. Flannery can prob- ably stomach at least one of those things. The festivals will likely stay much the same as I remember them—and that's not a bad thing for me, since I have fond memo- ries. But many other things will be changing this summer. Our girl is moving faster and faster in- to toddlerhood—walking, talking and tantrum-throwing all at once. My job is changing too, and with it, my day-to-day schedule. I've ad- justed fairly well, I think, to surviv- ing an "as-needed" work week, but I'm looking forward to seeing the flow of time in a new way once that transition happens. This summer will also mark the first real vaca- tion I've taken in almost two years, and I hope to produce some sort of art while I'm away. If it turns out to be word art, I might just share it with all of you. Yes, there's a lot of big chang- es on the horizon in our little fam- ily this summer, but in the midst of all of that, it's good to have some things that stay the same. The same festival foods, the same blue sky, the same morning cof- fee (well, I have a different blend every morning but the routine is the same)... There's a beauty and a music to routine and ritual. Slow- ing down to listen to it helps me to close my eyes and let the ever- swirling future come, rather than straining myself to get a closer look. May you as well find comfort in your favorite routines this sum- mer. And as we part for another week, I'll leave you with my usual short list of things: Book: The Lord of the Rings tril- ogy by J.R.R. Tolkien—but I'm cheating and listening to the fan- tastic audio version, adapted in- to radio drama by Bernard Mays, during commutes. Television: The Incredibles is just as impressive to me now (though for different reasons) as it was when I still read comic books. Coffee: A huge box of K-cups la- beled "Victor Allen's Seasonal Edi- tion Holiday Favorites" appeared in my kitchen one recent morn- ing. I have no idea what sinister force pulled it from the void into my kitchen, and I certainly hope they don't expect me to foot the bill, but I especially like the Pep- permint Bark flavor. Music: Ain't nobody got time for that! But I hear good things about Donald Glover's new funk album.