The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/870146
The Press-Dispatch Wednesday, September 6, 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 I'm always suspicious when somebody objects to being "put in a box." Often, it's a Liberal who objects to being called a Liberal, based on his views, or a young per- son who displays a tattoo or Face- book status that "only God can judge me." As a prosecutor friend chuckled, "you keep thinking that, Sport. You keep thinking that." That's not to say it's hypocritical to have nuanced opinions. Not ev- ery sensible policy position fits on a bumper sticker. But when some- body habitually prefers obscurity to clarity, he's probably up to no good. Everybody would love to avoid accountability. Why wouldn't we? But we can't have honest policy de- bates without accepting responsi- bility for the consequences of our actions, and for the implications of our positions. I know some peo- ple object to being called pro-abor- tion, yet their political behavior— year in and year out—ensures the continued slaughter of unborn children. Are you one of them? If so, why shouldn't we call you pro-abortion? Maybe it's bad manners. Yas- ser Arafat, after all, was introduced in po- lite company as chair- man of the Palestine Liberation Organiza- tion, not as a Jew-killer. But in a forum intend- ed to decide whether Jews ought to be killed, it would have been hon- est and necessary to identify him as a Jew-killer. Every American congressional and presidential election decides whether unborn children ought to be killed, even if they're not men- tioned. By action or inaction, your representatives and your president will decide the fate of thousands of unborn American children this year and every year, even if they skillfully avoid saying so. They may do so dramatically, they may do so incrementally, but they will do so. It's unavoidable. Our own accountability is also unavoidable. If we feel job creation, immi- gration, recreational drugs or foreign pol- icy are more impor- tant than whether we protect our most de- fenseless children from skull-crushing, dismemberment and chemical poisoning, we are pro-abortion. Own it. Don't muddy the waters to avoid being identified. Our democracy has slaughtered 61 million unborn babies since I graduated from high school. Part of the reason that can happen in a country with a purportedly Chris- tian majority is that we have be- come very agile at "frame-shift- ing" or changing the subject. Most recently, former Sen. John Danforth (R-Missouri) called on fellow Republicans to repudiate We live in an era of arrested ad- olescent development; whereas, millions of adults behave as if they are still in puberty and live with mom and dad. Dr. Paul Kindlon in a recent col- umn [Permanent Adolescence: The Epidemic That Will Destroy America] writes, "If one is able to observe American society in an ob- jective manner (granted no easy task), it becomes clear that the country is suffering from an ep- idemic of arrested emotional de- velopment (AED). This particular illness is characterized by some combinations: addiction, greed, immaturity, fear, blame, shame, re- sentments, anger, confusion, and suffering. What it means is that the vast majority of Americans are stuck in adolescence exhibit- ing behavior like lying, negative attitudes, disobedience and disre- spect, drug and alcohol abuse, de- pression, and issues of sexuality." These AEDs have found a voice in the protest movement Antifa which is bulging with victimized youth who have no connection and concept of history. They demand congress enact hate legislation while capitulating to their whims to rewrite or purge the past of all offensive monuments. No city, memorial, or icon is ex- empt. In Indiana, groups are call- ing for the removal of panel 10 of a 22 panel mural of Indiana histo- ry painted by Thom- as Hart Benton more than 80 years ago, which is currently lo- cated in Woodburn Hall at Indiana Univer- sity. It contains a visu- al of the Ku Klux Klan burning a cross. Sorry it offends, but the Ku Klux Klan is a part of 20th century Indiana history. Which group or who is demon- strating hate and intolerance? Hate is somewhat like truth in our era it must be defined because our nation lacks the collective con- sciousness and the cohesion that it had 50 years ago. The clarion call to pass hate crime legislation is just one step away from criminalizing thoughts and ideas. All "crimes" are an aspect of hate. In Genesis chapter 4, we read that Cain was angry with God because He [God] would not ac- cept his offering, and was admon- ished to have the proper attitude and heart. How did Cain respond? Since he could not strike out di- rectly at God, he killed his brother! Hate? Often the detractors of religion have expressed their de- light in mentioning religion's part in the killings of the past. Sorry, religious wars are pale in comparison to the Assyrians [circa 700 BC] who killed indis- criminately. Read of Rome's hatred toward Carthage and how they destroyed this North A frican civili- zation [circa 150 BC]. Read of the Mongols and Genghis Khan who killed 100 million Asians and Eastern Europeans [12-13th Cen- tury AD]. Read where Lenin and Stalin leaders of the Soviet Union destroyed a Christian culture in the 20th century along with 30 -50 million subjects; Mao Zedong of China drove China towards Com- munism killing between 50 -100 million people. But the real boogie man is Adolph Hitler and National Socialism who killed between 10 - 20 million. You cannot outlaw hate because it lies within the soul of mankind. The apostle Paul makes this very clear in his letter to the Church at Rome when he wrote: "For I don't do the good I want to do, but in- stead do the evil that I don't want to do." To outlaw hate would require us Continued on page 8 Continued on page 8 Continued on page 8 Minority View by Walter E. Williams The Weekly by Jill Heuring My Point of View by Dr. H. K. Fenol, Jr., M.D. Racial lies and racism Points to Ponder by Rev. Ford Bond Boycott hate Time to take accountability 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 Earlier this month, The New York Times ran an article titled "U.S. Rights Unit Shifts to Study Antiwhite Bias" on its front page. The article says that President Donald Trump's Justice Depart- ment's civil rights division is go- ing to investigate and sue univer- sities whose affirmative action admissions policies discriminate against white applicants. This is an out-and-out lie. The truth is that the U.S. departments of Justice and Education plan to investigate racial bias in admissions at Har- vard and other elite institutions where Asian-Americans are held to far higher standards than oth- er applicants. This type of practice was used during the first half of the 20th century to limit the num- ber of Jews at Harvard and other Ivy League schools. Drs. Thomas Espenshade and Alexandria Radford documented discrimination against Asians in their 2009 award-winning book, "No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal: Race and Class in Elite Col- lege Admission and Campus Life." Their research demonstrated that, when controlling for other vari- ables, Asian students faced con- siderable odds against their admis- sion. To be admitted to elite col- leges, Asians needed SAT scores 140 points higher than whites, 270 points higher than Hispanics and 450 points higher than blacks. An Asian applicant with an SAT score of 1500 (out of a possible 1600 on the old SAT) had the same chance of being admitted as a white stu- dent with a 1360 score, a Latino with a 1230 and a black student with a 1050 score. Another way of looking at it is that among ap- plicants who had the highest SAT scores (within the 1400 -1600 range), 77 percent of blacks were admitted, 48 percent of Hispanics, 40 percent of whites and only 30 percent of Asians. The case of Austin Jia is typi- cal of what happens to Asian stu- dents. In 2015, Jia graduated from high school and had a nearly per- fect score of 2340 out of 2400 pos- sible points on the new SAT. His GPA was 4.42, and he had taken 11 Advanced Placement courses in high school. He had been on his school's debate team, been the tennis team's captain and played the violin in the all-state orches- tra. His applications for admission were rejected at Harvard, Prince- ton and Columbia universities, as well as at the University of Penn- sylvania. Jia said that his rejection was particularly disturbing when certain classmates who had lower scores but were not Asian-Amer- ican like him were admitted to those Ivy League schools. California universities present an interesting case. At one time, they also discriminated against Asians in admissions, but now it's a different story. As of 2008, Asians made up 40 percent of the students enrolled at UCL A and 43 percent at the University of Cali- fornia, Berkeley. Last school year, 42 percent of students at Caltech were Asian. You might ask what accounts for the high numbers. It turns out that in 1996, Proposi- tion 209 (also known as the Cali- fornia Civil Rights Initiative) was approved by California voters. The measure amended the state con- stitution to prohibit state govern- mental institutions from consider- ing race, sex or ethnicity in the ar- eas of public employment, public contracting and public education. The experience of California, where racially discriminatory ad- missions policy has been reduced, suggests that if Ivy League univer- sities were prohibited from using race as a factor in admissions, the Asian-American admissions rate would rise while the percentages of white, black and Hispanic stu- dents would fall. Diversity-crazed college administrators would throw a hissy fit. By the way, di- versity-crazed administrators are willing accomplices in the near- ly total lack of racial diversity on their basketball teams. It's not un- usual to watch games in which there's not a single white, Hispan- ic or Asian player. Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz says, "The idea of dis- criminating against Asians in or- der to make room for other minor- ities doesn't seem right as a mat- ter of principle." Dershowitz is ab- Completely blindsided One of the most puzzling and challenging aspects of my work when I was in active practice was addiction and dependence. For the life of me I could not complete- ly comprehend why a human be- ing would get hooked on addict- ing substances and behaviors and then destroy their lives and other lives too. From alcohol, to opioids, to tobacco, to electronic gadgets, to food, to destructive behaviors, to you name it. So it was an everyday challenge, I mean every day, to try to control the tricky and innovative behaviors of those who have fallen victim to this slavery. I remember in medical school and in training and in the post graduate courses I got educated with the biochemical and psycho- logical and social aspects of these illnesses. Many theories floated around—such as materials like narcotics entering our brain and becoming converted to morphine like substances, fragmented psy- chological thought process that fail to sound alarm bells, broken down social structure and support lead- ing to a human being making bad decisions, neurobiochemical de- fects that may have been a result of genetics or trauma or injury, and sometimes we just cannot seem to figure out the cause. Opioid addiction Continued on page 8 Continued on page 8 We were at the mall, Alden, Flannery and I, and like the good parents we are, we took Flannery to the play area to stretch out her legs. Like the anxious parent I am, I followed Flannery around to make sure she didn't get into trouble. She was a good little girl, just running around, occasional- ly trying to follow some of the bigger kids as they raced their cars. She did get a bit rough at one point, but the father of the child was very good-natured about it (I can proudly say I was not the only anxious parent fol- lowing their kid around.) Nothing could have prepared me for what happened next. I was going to get some food, leaving Alden behind to follow Flannery around. I turned away, but out of the corner of my eye I saw a child fall. Sure enough, I whipped my head back around, and there was Flannery, flat on her back. She didn't cry or get upset. She looked a little stunned, and I think she was done play- ing after that. A bigger girl had run straight into her, knocking her down. I rushed over to her, checked her head for knots, but she was fine. Alden and I were not fine. It was a big moment for us as parents, the start of accepting that we wouldn't be able to pro- tect her from everything. I think it's something every parent has to go through. Try as we might, we really can't protect our chil- dren from everything. I had du- tifully followed Flannery around that play area for half an hour, but I couldn't protect her from fall- ing down. More things will happen. Flan- nery will scrape her knee on the playground at school. May- be she'll have a bully. At some point, she'll suffer a broken heart. I can't protect her from everything. But that's a good thing. As Continued on page 8