The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/853570
The Press-Dispatch Wednesday, July 26, 2017 C-11 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 The president has been accused of "(endorsing) violence against journalists" for tweeting a puer- ile WrestleMania video send-up in which he scuffled and punched a wrestler whose face was replaced with the logo of CNN, his real-life nemesis. CNN promptly called it "a sad day when the President of the United States encourages vio- lence against reporters." Ana Navarro, a Jeb Bush sup- porter who voted for Hillary Clin- ton last year, said the president "is going to get somebody killed in the media" by his over-the-top hostili- ty. But so far, the only people who have incited political violence dur- ing the Trump presidency are the Liberals. It was Bernie Sanders supporter James Hodgkinson, after all, who took a Chinese-made rifle to a Vir- ginia ballfield last month to open fire on Republican legislators. We can't blame all Democrats for what one of their demented crackpots did in Alexandria, and in fact Rep. Nancy Pelosi denounced the at- tack in no uncertain terms. But Sen. Sanders did compare the Republi- can health care bill to the 9/11 terrorist at- tack. Sen. Elizabeth Warren did tweet that the Republican health care bill is "blood mon- ey." Does she know what blood money is? I'd say James Hodgkin- son knew what blood money is. She can't blame her tweet on a snowflake social me- dia intern, because she used the same phrase in a speech on the Senate floor. The broadcast networks ei- ther ignored Sen. Warren's ac- cusation altogether (ABC, CBS) or mentioned it briefly in admira- tion (NBC). One watchdog group timed the Today show at seven sec- onds, the NBC Nightly News at 14 seconds. NBC characterized Sen. Warren as "defiant," and carried no criticism of her remark. The background was a sit-in by wheel- chair Democrats at Mitch McConnell's office. At (cable) MS - NBC, Joy Reid won- dered aloud wheth- er Liberals ought to care about the shoot- ing of a congressman who opposed gay mar- riage. The partisanship of the mainstream media, truth be told, is part of the problem. They are an opposition party, not a disinterested observer. The deference to which the news media feel entitled was based on an earned reputation for impar- tiality. The press should be enter- prising and proactive, but it is not a prosecutor. It's a witness. And no witness is entitled to credibil- ity. That must be earned every day. In April, when peaceful Trump supporters rallied for free speech We are entombed within a cult of death where modern politicians and lawyers quibble over simple words. Evil is one such word that among secularists has almost dis- appeared. Let us define evil as found in the Old Testament. Evil is "wrongdoing, calamity, great grief, misery, wickedness, sorrow, and wretchedness." The concept of evil predates the Law of Moses which defined evil, wrongdoing, and sin beginning with the Ten Commandments. The Apostle Paul summarized the entire law this way: "For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." This very cliché is a moral tru- ism that has no equal within hu- man philosophy because acting to- ward others in love may not be in your best interest. But this is the foundation of God's grace and mer- cy. The ability to act in moral di- lemma through "loving others as yourself" is the crowning of God's creation. Therefore, we can readily define evil without equivocation. Evil and sin is doing harm and injury not only to God, but to others! To do harm without suffering spiritual repercussions requires embracing a different set of val- ues/morals that Christianity sup- plied for almost two millennium. God does not change; but pro- gressives declare that He reveals His real nature as our intellect and spirit matures. As an example Char- lie Gard, the disabled infant with whom the British courts are wrestling: should he live or die? Before the post-Christian age, this would not have been a tenable question; "Would experimental medical treatment be in Charlie's Gard's best inter- ests? Or should he be taken off of life support and allowed to die? " The larger issue, the right to "die," is an iatrical part of eutha- nasia: the right to die with dignity. Who will decide when the digni- ty of life has eroded? The answer is a doctor and bureaucrat; just like for Charlie Gard. The "The British Medical Jour- nal reported recently that Dutch legislators are considering the ex- tension of their law of euthanasia to old people who are not fatally ill but merely tired of life and who, therefore, wish to end life. Euthanasia is akin to putting down an animal. Humans are not animals; therefore, the issue be- comes more complexed. If your 90 year-old grandma falls and breaks her hip, should she just be comfort- ed and allowed to die? The statistics are not in her favor for a full recovery or an un- assisted life. This is the Pandora's Box that has been opened. When euthanasia be- came permitted in the Netherlands, it was in the name of humanity and sympathy. Without question, there are cases where illness, dis- ease, or injury is accompanied by unimaginable suffering and hope- less. But again, who decides death is preferred, and that is the solu- tion? The Christian ethnos has been [until our era] suffering is part of life. How one dealt with suf- fering verified spiritual maturity. The axiom "what is tolerated today becomes accepted tomor- row" leads the secular world on- to a slippery-slope. In other words, "once you concede 'a', you have no firm ground from which to resist the concession of 'b' [and so on], until you reach an abyss where all things are acceptable." Who will have the authority to decide "it is for their own good to die? " Who's good? Continued on page 12 Continued on page 12 Continued on page 12 Continued on page 12 Minority View by Walter E. Williams The Weekly by Alden Heuring My Point of View by Dr. H. K. Fenol, Jr., M.D. Slavery Points to Ponder by Rev. Ford Bond Embrace life and reject death Who is inciting violence? Lucid Moments by Bart Stinson Teen abstinence is up even as weekly religious attendance down Heritage Viewpoint by Edwin J. Feulner One of the upsides to the inter- net? All that information. One of the downsides? All that information. Tons of it, spread all over the place. And who knows what's reliable and what isn't? Say you want to know which di- rection the numbers in the U.S. are heading when it comes to wel- fare dependency. Or you're curious about the divorce rate, or how bad teen drug use is. Or you're wonder- ing about unemployment or what the high-school graduation rate is. Surprisingly enough, there's a one-stop shop for fully-sourced in- formation on these questions, and many more: The Heritage Foun- dation's 2017 Index of Culture and Opportunity. I often describe it as a national dashboard of social indi- cators. And as always, some gaug- es this time out look pretty good. Too many others, however, are flashing red. The Index isn't intended to be a deep dive into pol- icy minutiae. It's a data-driven snap- shot of where things stand, good and bad. But it's not just a col- lection of charts and graphs. Short essays by a range of policy experts are included to give the issues con- text. So what's up, and what's down? Here's a sample of the bad news: • A declining marriage rate. The median age of marriage rose from 23.2 years in 1970 to 29.5 in 2016 for men and from 20.8 years in 1970 to 27.4 in 2016 for women. "Marriage has long been a part of the American dream," writes Rev. Derek McCoy. "People have an in- nate understanding that healthy marriages build healthy lives and families. But the de- clining marriage rate shows that the dream is fading." • Weekly religious attendance is down. It declined 2.1 percent- age points between 2006 and 2016, con- tinuing a gradual slide in recent decades. "The long-term de- cline in church attendance should trouble even those who are not personally religious," writes John Stonestreet. As the scholarly re- search shows, "the benefits of reg- ular church attendance are virtual- ly impossible to dispute." • Teen drug use is up. Just un- der one-quarter of 12th graders Too many people believe that slavery is a "peculiar institution." That's what Kenneth Stampp called slavery in his book, "Pecu- liar Institution: Slavery in the An- te-Bellum South." But slavery is by no means peculiar, odd or un- usual. It was common among an- cient peoples such as the Egyp- tians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Hit- tites, Greeks, Persians, Armenians and many others. Large numbers of Christians were enslaved dur- ing the Ottoman wars in Europe. White slaves were common in Eu- rope from the Dark Ages to the Middle Ages. It was only after A.D. 1600 that Europeans joined with Arabs and A fricans and start- ed the Atlantic slave trade. As Da- vid P. Forsythe wrote in his book, "The Globalist," "The fact re- mained that at the beginning of the nineteenth century an estimated three-quarters of all people alive were trapped in bondage against their will either in some form of slavery or serfdom." While slavery constitutes one of the grossest encroachments on human liberty, it is by no means unique or restricted to the West- ern world or United States, as ma- ny liberal academics would have us believe. Much of their indoctri- nation of our young people, at all levels of education, paints our na- tion's founders as racist adherents to slavery, but the story is not so simple. At the time of the 1787 Consti- tutional Convention, slaves were about 40 percent of the population of the Southern colonies. Appor- tionment in the House of Repre- sentatives and the number of elec- toral votes each state would have in presidential elections would be based upon population. Southern delegates to the convention want- ed slaves to be counted as one per- son. Northern delegates to the convention, and those opposed to slavery, wanted only free persons of each state to be counted for the purposes of apportionment in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College. The compro- mise reached was that each slave would be counted as only three- fifths of a person. Many criticize this compromise as proof of racism. My question to these grossly uninformed critics is whether they would have found it more preferable for slaves to be counted as whole persons. Slaves counted as whole persons would have given slaveholding Southern states much more political power. Or, would the critics of the found- ers prefer that the Northern dele- gates not compromise and not al- low slaves to be counted at all. If they did, it is likely that the Con- stitution would have not been rat- ified. Thus, the question emerges is whether blacks would be bet- ter off with Northern states hav- ing gone their way and Southern states having gone theirs, result- ing in no U.S. Constitution and no Union? Unlike today's pseudointel- lectuals, black abolitionist Freder- ick Douglass understood the com- promise, saying that the three- fifths clause was "a downright dis- ability laid upon the slaveholding states" that deprived them of "two- fifths of their natural basis of rep- resentation." Douglass' vision was shared by Patrick Henry and others. Hen- ry said, expressing the reality of the three-fifths compromise, "As much as I deplore slavery, I see that prudence forbids its aboli- tion." With this union, Congress at least had the power to abolish slave trade by 1808. According to delegate James Wilson, many be- lieved the anti-slave-trade clause laid "the foundation for banishing slavery out of this country." Many of the founders abhorred slavery. Their statements can be read on my website, walterewilliams.com. The most unique aspect of slav- ery in the Western world was the moral outrage against it, which be- gan to emerge in the 18th century and led to massive elimination ef- forts. It was Britain's military sea power that put an end to the slave trade. And our country fought a costly war that brought an end to slavery. Unfortunately, these facts about slavery are not in the lessons taught in our schools and colleg- es. Instead, there is gross misrep- resentation and suggestion that slavery was a uniquely American practice. Walter E. Williams is a profes- sor of economics at George Mason University. Simplify Parenthood is a funny thing. Sometimes you and your kid fall asleep snuggled up watching Find- ing Dory together. Sometimes, you hold your kid's hand so she can walk up and down a staircase. For three hours. Sometimes, you cut up an apple for her and she throws the bowl on the floor. Sometimes, she pulls on your beard and it re- ally hurts, but she's smiling at you and you know it's a smile of love so you smile back anyway. Flannery is a year and a half old now. Her personality is coming out more and more, and she's getting better and better at communicat- ing her thoughts and feelings with us. I worry about how well I'm do- ing at communicating back. It's so easy to get distracted and take the most important things for granted in favor of the crisis or amusement du jour. "Sufficient for the day is its own evil," as someone said. May- be Jesus? So, to help me be everything Flannery needs me to be, I'm go- ing to try to step back and figure out what attachments in my life I need and don't need. And simpli- fy. Maybe there's some things I've been focused on that just don't mat- ter. Maybe there are some things I've been neglecting that deserve more attention. But I'm a firm be- liever that it's not good for a person to have too many irons in the fire. And I always want to be a better fa- ther and husband—I have plenty of room to improve there for sure. Fortunately, I've been given an opportunity to do just that. With my recent career change, I've got consistent time in the morn- ings and time in the evenings to fill with new habits. So I need to make sure I choose good habits. Habits that help me be more pres- ent to my family. Habits that help me put others first. Habits that ex- pand my mind and heart. I don't expect it to be easy, but I know the effort will bear fruit. So that's me this week, and this is the stuff of the week: Movie: Andrew Stanton and Angus MacLane's Finding Dory. If you've ever seen the oh-so-dark and oh-so-good suspense classic Memento, imagine a movie about the same mental disorder, but with the exact opposite trajectory. Shar- ing this film with Flannery was an evening well spent. Music: Bastille's Warmth. "I just keep talking about it/But I'll do nothing about it/Tell me did you see the news last night? " Coffee: Good old Dunkin' Do- nuts House Blend. Haiku: While you decline to cry, high on the mountainside a single stalk of plumegrass wilts. -O no Yasumaro There are some flashes of memo- ry that do not seem to leave me. I lik- ened them as imprints of experienc- es, or P TSDs, or a compilation of life's story during my formative years in in- ternship and post-graduate training. These recollections are unique to my life and not every physician journeys the same path. I humbly share these events. They consisted of the first times.... Seeing for the first time the birth of a baby in live action, the first time de- livering a baby under supervision, the first time I gave an injection and successfully started an IV and drew blood, the first time I had to stitch up a wound, the first time I had assisted in surgery as first assistant, first time I did a liver biopsy, first time I started doing an IV on the scalp of a baby, the Down memory lane, part II