The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/864666
The Press-Dispatch Wednesday, August 23, 2017 D-7 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 Dumbledore, one of J. K. Row- ling's characters in Harry Potter, observes that "people find it far easier to forgive others for being wrong than being right." That cer- tainly applies to the mainstream media. When Jimmy Carter was run- ning for president in 1976, he was forgiven for speeches in Milwau- kee, South Bend and Indianapolis in which he said he had "nothing against" urban communities "try- ing to maintain the ethnic purity of their neighborhoods." He said he opposed the "intru- sion of alien groups into a neigh- borhood, simply to establish that intrusion." Three years later, he gave a more thoughtful speech. I watched it in a big box store in Seattle, in the television department. It was about the energy crisis, in part, but also about our own "malaise." It confronted us about our material- ism and consumerism, but the me- dia weren't in the mood for moral- istic homilies on personal respon- sibility. For this, there would be no forgiveness. He was disparaged as an incompetent, if not a rube. He got a primary challenger, Teddy Kennedy. And the optimism of Ron- ald Reagan swept him out of the White House within 18 months. Today, Donald Trump is the preten- tious outsider whom Washington media elites have judged illegiti- mate, despite national election re- sults. He'll be forgiven for opposing the removal of Confederate statues by the cities where they're located, although he's wrong about that. I have written previously about why those statues should come down. A lot of people, Republican and Democrat alike, have neverthe- less grown fond of the statues just for their aesthetic beauty. But Trump will never be forgiv- en for telling the truth about Char- lottesville, that there were bad people with malignant intentions on both sides of the confrontation there. The Charlottes- ville police described those young people as "mutual combatants." That would seem to support the Presi- dent's view. Of the mainstream media, only CNN's Jake Tapper has given any serious attention to Antifa, the vio- lent leftists who confronted the alt- right, KKK and neo-Nazi demon- strators at Charlottesville. In pre- vious outings, Antifa has thrown M-80 artillery simulators into Trump gatherings, rioted to pre- vent speakers from addressing Trump supporters, smashed win- dows and bloodied peaceably as- sembled conservatives with fists In the Beginning, God! " This very pronouncement was the bed- rock of Western Civilization for centuries. Now, it is on the verge of being overthrown. The Western World has been in the grip of a life and death cultural struggle for more than a century. Europe for all intents and purpos- es has abandoned its Creator; the soul of America is the next prize sought by the enlightened subver- sives. The recent tragedy in Charlot- tesville, Virginia, speaks volumes of what is at stake, and who is incit- ing the passions of the populous. The progressive multiculturalists with the assistance of the main- stream media are taking no pris- oners and demanding that every- one connected with the "right" be denounced. But no one is allowed to ask why the "alt-right" emerged. Instead, the curious are met with the cry that these people are Nazis, fas- cists, white-extremists, misogy- nists, and homophobes. The left turned out in numbers and were not peaceful, but you can- not mention that. What is at stake is the rewriting and reinterpreta- tion of American history. The Church was the bulwark that held the liberalization of mo- rality in check. That force is gone. It did not happen overnight, but the apparent successes of those who desire a more li- centious culture have succeeded. But it won't last. All cultures and civilization that turn inward disappear. As we watch the po- litical world unravel, many are missing the emergence of the fi- nal onslaught against God, against gender, and against the family. LGBT [gay] rights and the sex- ual revolution are both interwoven in the cultural war America is ex- periencing. Gender identity is the last pillar of individual identifica- tion to remove from Western Civ- ilization, which vanquishes God from His creation [the others are family, religion, ethnicity, and na- tionality]. The gay rights movement took the script from the Civil Rights movement and took its claims to court and over time "won" rights that no state or federal legislature would have enacted into law. It was the Supreme Court that "legiti- mized" LGBT demands and gave them political and social rights by fiat, and not law. This is not the end. Agitation continues to demand decriminal- ize of all aspects of consensual sex [whatever consensual means]. But what is the end game? Marriage and the family, the very bedrock of Western Civilization has been "redefined," so is there nothing left? Yes! It is the attack on gender so as to re- define the very con- cept of sexual identi- ty to the point there is no gender; thereby, humanity be- comes transgendered. Transgenderism attacks the Creator and His creation. It seeks to redefine what it means to be male/female. In the Book of Gen- esis, we read that God created all animals male and female, but mankind was created in His im- age and given a soul. Humanity reflects God. Transgenderism demands the end to assigning gender charac- teristics based upon genitalia and genetics. To these people, gen- der is fluid and changeable. The end game of transgenderism goes beyond the destruction of West- ern culture; it desires to erase all boundaries between humans and their environment. On the horizon is the develop- Continued on page 8 Continued on page 8 Continued on page 8 Minority View by Walter E. Williams Pursuit of the Cure by Star Parker My Point of View by Dr. H. K. Fenol, Jr., M.D. Women and men are equal Trump is right: Bigotry, violence 'on many sides' Points to Ponder by Rev. Ford Bond The image of God Charlottesville and the President Lucid Moments by Bart Stinson Toward a more muscular missile defense Heritage Viewpoint by Edwin J. Feulner There is no excuse for an inade- quate anti-missile shield An air of fatalism surrounds much of the coverage of the es- calating tensions between North Korea and the United States. If Pyongyang launched a missile at us or at one of our allies, the feel- ing goes, we could do nothing but brace ourselves for catastrophic damage and loss of life. Which makes this a good time to ask: What's the state of our mis- sile defense? The good news, we have a sys- tem in place. We could shoot down an incoming missile. The bad news? The system isn't as capable as it could or should be. Fortunate- ly, we can do something about that. First, though, let's look at what North Korea has, and what kind of missile defense we have right now. North Korea boasts a very active nuclear-weapons program. The country has faced decades of sanc- tions, and the communist leaders in Pyongyang have inflicted an enormous economic toll on its pop- ulation. Yet North Ko- rea has continued to develop long-range ballistic missiles for a long time. Its goal, as mis- sile-defense expert Michaela Dodge re- minds us in a new paper, is apparently to threaten the U.S. homeland. It is al- ready capable of threatening U.S. allies in South Korea and Japan, as well as American forces stationed in those countries. Such a situation is clearly untenable. "It is increasingly obvious," Ms. Dodge writes, "that the Kim Jong- Un regime will not voluntarily give up its nuclear weapons program, which leaves the United States with an option to either be vulner- able to the whims of an unpredict- able totalitarian dictatorship or find ways to defend its way of life as well as its allies." That defense rests in large measure on a Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system, which remains the only mis- sile-defense system we have capable of shooting down long- range ballistic mis- siles headed for the U.S. homeland. The U.S. GMD system is the only one we have capable of inter- cepting an intercontinental ballis- tic missile in the mid-course phase of its flight. The United States cur- rently deploys four interceptors in California and 32 in Alaska. If all goes according to plan, those 36 will increase to 44 by the end of this year. We also have systems capable of shooting down shorter-range Google fired software engi- neer James Damore for writing a 10 -page memo critical of the com- pany's diversity policy. The me- mo violated the company's code of conduct by "advancing harmful gender stereotypes" by suggest- ing that biological factors were part of the cause for the male/fe- male gap in the tech industry. I shall make the case that Google's actions were totally jus- tified. Other than differences in certain physical attributes such as genitalia, capacity to give birth and the presence of functional mammary glands, males and fe- males are identical in every oth- er respect. Any remaining male/ female differences are a direct re- sult of oppression, discrimination and victimization by the larger so- ciety. To examine just one aspect of female victimization, let's exam- ine the majors of female college students compared to their male counterparts. According to a study by the Fed- eral Reserve Bank of New York, there are significant sex differ- ences in college majors. For exam- ple, though women and men are equally represented in the popula- tion at large, women make up only 17 percent of engineering degrees conferred compared to 83 percent conferred to men. How can such a gross disparity be explained? I rec- ommend an investigation to dis- cover whether colleges are steer- ing women away from higher-pay- ing fields such as engineering and into lower-paying fields such as ed- ucation and social sciences. Seven- ty-seven percent of education ma- jors are women and so are 64 per- cent of social sciences majors. One wonders how such a dispar- ity among equals can exist. I have personally visited George Mason Univeristy's Volgenau School of Engineering. There are no signs forbidding women from becoming an engineering major. But just be- cause there are no visible prohibi- tions doesn't mean there is no evil plot against women. A number of years ago, I took a tour of UC Berkeley College of Engineering. Not only did I observe a paucity of women but also, because of the ra- cial appearances of the students in some of the classes, I could have easily been in Asia. Colleges have the power to ensure that there are just as many female as male engi- neering majors. They can mandate that fewer female freshmen major in social sciences and education and instead major in engineering. To balance this all out they can dis- allow large numbers of men from majoring in engineering and in- stead force them to major in edu- cation or the social sciences. Although Damore's memo was seen by Google as "advancing harmful gender stereotypes," at least he didn't make any sugges- tion of male/female IQ differenc- es. Doing so would have led not on- ly to his firing but being ordered to leave the state of California. A number of studies show that male IQ has greater variance than fe- male IQ. In other words, female IQs show less variance and cluster toward the middle. Males IQs have more variance and therefore occu- py the extreme high and low ends on the intelligence scale. That boils down to the fact that there are more male than female genius- es. But on the down side there are more male than female morons. Since men run the IQ tests and probably rig it against women, the claim that there are more male ge- niuses could be bogus. Kay S. Hymowitz's City Journal (summer 2011) article, "Why the Gender Gap Won't Go Away. Ev- er," shows that female doctors earn only 64 percent of what male doc- tors earn. But it turns out that on- ly 16 percent of surgeons are wom- en, whereas 50 percent of pedia- tricians are women. Even though surgeons have put in many more years of education and training than pediatricians and earn high- er pay, should their salaries be equalized? Alternatively, medical schools might force more female medical students to become sur- geons and force male students to become pediatricians to promote wage equality. You say, "Are you serious, Wil- Round 2- health care- why it is expensive? My personal opinion. Many look to our neighbor to the north-Canada and study their health care. I trained and worked in that system and was living there for five years. I know a little bit how they operate their system. They have also one of the best health care systems in the world. I saw with my own eyes and experienced using their health care system. Now remember the population of Canada is about 35 million. Our current US population is about 322 million. Right then you will under- stand what giant of a system we have to support. Let's get some practical realistic scenarios. In Ontario and likely in all the provinces of Canada (they call Provinces instead of States), getting into health care providers is rather streamlined and most of the time easy. Access is faster if the medical sit- uation is urgent. Practically every- body is able to access good care. Waiting times can be longer if the specialty needed is not wide- ly available . MRIs and CAT scans which we order here in the States as though they were like ordering blood tests ASAP is rather hard to get in the Canadian Health Care system. Why is health care expensive? Continued on page 8 Continued on page 8 British writer and theologian G.K. Chesterton observed, "It is hatred that unites people – while love is always individual." The use of hatred to mobilize has a long and bloody history. We should understand why it works so well. It taps into human weakness. It exploits the unwillingness of in- dividuals to take responsibility for their own lives, to courageously confront life's ambiguities and in- consistencies, and still move for- ward constructively. It's so much easier to blame someone else. This is what racism is about. Speaking to the horrible inci- dent in Charlottesville, President Donald Trump condemned the "egregious display of bigotry and violence" on "many sides" that's "been going on for a long time in our country." The president ap- pealed for the "hate and violence" to stop and that we "come togeth- er as Americans." For these remarks the president is being attacked. Immediately, former Vice Pres- ident Biden tweeted out "only one side." Congressional Black Caucus member Maxine Waters followed suit with the same. But President Trump is right. The use of hate to blame others, the refusal to take personal re- sponsibility for one's life, is going on and has been going on in our nation "for a long time" on "many sides." Being honest about this does not justify the vile white suprema- cist violence and murder in Char- lottesville. But to claim that these distorted individuals are the ex- clusive locus of bigotry in Amer- ica does not help our cause. The Black Lives Movement, for example, has been going on for a number of years, with rallies Continued on page 8