The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/898366
The Press-Dispatch Wednesday, November 8, 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 "Now, brethren, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, we ask you, not to be soon shaken in mind or troubled, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as if from us, as though the day of Christ had come. Let no one de- ceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the fall- ing away comes first…" [II Thes- salonians 2:1-3a]. Christians for the last century have been pondering, "Is the Day of the Lord at hand; will Jesus re- turn in my lifetime? " The 20th century was a catas- trophe in loss of life due to war and pestilence and has no equal in the modern era. Milton Leiten- berg's places the number at 142 million people [others much high- er]. One of the latent consequenc- es of wars and the accompanied social upheavals was the loss of faith on Christian civilization [is this the falling away?]. This had dire consequences in the decades that followed, especially the loss of a moral compass among the na- tions. Christianity [as do all religions] provides moral and civil absolutes that binds the citizens of a nation together. Moral ambiguity cannot exist with the cultural norms; so- cial change occurs across time. A stable society is the result. Social activism and justice is a new phe- nomenon to civiliza- tion. All cultures have had social critics and aberrations; neverthe- less, individuality was secondary to group cohesion. The western world in the 21st century is enveloped by an irre- ligious and anti-religious climate. Since the scientific and academic acceptance of Darwinian thought, Christianity has been treated by the elite as an ancient superstition relegated to the dustbin of history. I would not be so bold to accept that conclusion. Christianity is the heart and soul of the greatest civilization the world has produced. Sadly, those seeking to overthrow Chris- tianity fail to understand that the world they wish to remake and empowers them to protest, was made possible by Christianity. Historically, Christianity as a moral and spiritual movement stretched across Europe, Russia, the Americas, and the Pacifica. Without argument, the follow- ers of Christ directly impacted the arts, music, architecture, philoso- phy, and literature; it birthed sci- entific inquiry, representational government, the indi- vidual, and equality. The great Renais- sance artists, scien- tists, and philoso- phers pondered and gave shape to the western mind based upon their under- standing and search for a realistic faith. What sets Christi- anity apart from the great civili- zations of Islam in the Middle East and Confucianism of China is that they reached a zenith of knowl- edge and advance understanding and became self-satisfied; doing so, they lost their inquisitiveness, and cultural inertia set in. The Christian faith over the centuries gave rise to men and women seeking to understand the natural world as it relates to the spiritual and intangible world. What is life? This very question originates from the book of James in this wise: "For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away." By defining death as an enemy conquered by Christ [the last enemy that will be destroyed is death], life takes on meaning Continued on page 8 Continued on page 8 Continued on page 8 Minority View by Walter E. Williams The Weekly by Alden Heuring Let's help our media friends Points to Ponder by Rev. Ford Bond On the right side of history EPA no longer works for environmentalists Heritage Viewpoint by Edwin J. Feulner Whether you consider your- self pro-regulation, anti-regula- tion or something in between, chances are you're in favor of clear, open rules. Whatever the policy a particular government agency is following, it should be transparent to all, right? That's why we should be grate- ful that Scott Pruitt, head of the Environmental Protection Agen- cy (EPA), recently announced the demise of "sue and settle." It's a legal strategy that environ- mental groups have been using for years to impose new regula- tions quietly – and to enrich their allies in the process. The practice predates the Obama administration, but un- der the 44th president, "the sue- and-settle gambit was raised to an art form," Rob Gordon and Hans von Spakovsky write in National Review. "The administration would invite special-interest groups to sue the EPA over a regula- tion that it wanted to change but couldn't, at least not expeditiously," they add. "Instead of fighting the lawsuit, the EPA would then almost immediate- ly surrender, agree- ing to settle. Inevita- bly, the settlement entailed consent- ing to whatever out- rageous demands were being made by the agen- cy's handpicked 'adversary.' " A clever little trick – and one that completely circumvent- ed the way regulations are sup- posed to be imposed. Rules that affect the way an agency does business, especially ones that could saddle Americans with significant costs, are intended to be proposed and debated openly. The public is supposed to have ample opportunity to comment before being subjected to new rules that can affect their liveli- hoods. But under "sue and settle," that's not the case. Agencies sim- ply caved, unable or unwilling to fight the lawsuits. Worse, they would agree to make changes that went beyond what the law required, paying out tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars to cover the plaintiffs' legal bills. The EPA waved the white flag in 60 such lawsuits between 2009 and 2012. The result, ac- cording to Messrs. Gordon and von Spakovsky: more than 100 new federal rules estimated to impose $100 million in annual compliance costs. Think those costs are merely eaten up by the companies that I am not nearly so cold-heart- ed and unsympathetic toward the mainstream media as some of my conservative friends, such as Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Chris Plante and Ann Coulter. In fact, my heart goes out to them. As evidence of the same, if I had President Donald Trump's ear, I'd urge him to declare this coming Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2017, a day of re- membrance and order that flags be flown at half-staff on all federal buildings. Why? It will be the an- niversary of what must have been a most traumatic day for main- stream media people and the polit- ical pundits they interviewed. I am not a psychologist; however, I did take several courses in psycholo- gy and sociology as an undergrad- uate. Thus, I have enough training to analyze the continuing trauma resulting from last year's presiden- tial election. Days before the election, ABC News anchor George Stepha- nopoulos gleefully asked his guests about it. All except one predicted an Electoral College and popular vote landslide for Hillary Clinton (http://tinyurl. com/yaxyu44u). On one MSN- BC talk show, the panelists pre- dicted a historic defeat for Donald Trump (http://tinyurl.com/y9gb- jfw9). MSNBC host Rachel Mad- dow confidently and laughingly made predictions about Trump's trouncing defeat at the hands of Clinton (http://tinyurl.com/yc- j838aj). Not to be left out, there were Republicans who confident- ly predicted that Trump wouldn't even win the party's nomination, much less the presidency (http:// tinyurl.com/y9ggevqv). There were many other highly confident election predictions of Trump's defeat all over the inter- net and in the media, both national and international. Take the gleeful discussion between Maddow and Chris Matthews just prior to the election (http://tinyurl.com/h3s- k6ef ). It would have to be pure tor- ture to make them watch their pre- election broadcasts. Then, as election returns began to come in, showing Trump be- coming the next president, there were many instances of emotional crackups. If you check out the in- ternet, you will find dozens of in- stances featuring people crying and screaming and cursing the election results (http://tinyurl. com/y8pp7zuu). Some colleges re- sponded to Trump's victory by hav- ing cry-ins and primal screams. Some provided their students with therapy dogs, coloring books, Play-Doh and videos of playful kit- tens and puppies, as well as serv- ing snacks such as tea and choco- late. Some college administrators encouraged or allowed faculty to cancel or postpone exams because of the election results. Certain people have come up with a name for the ongoing lib- eral response to Clinton's defeat. They call it Trump derangement syndrome. I might point out that it's not only leftist Democrats who are in a tizzy over the election re- sults but also quite a few establish- ment Republicans. Evidence of continuing Trump derangement syndrome can be found in the calls for his impeachment by members of Congress such as Maxine Wa- ters, Al Green and Brad Sherman. There is a treatment for TDS. In- stead of watching MSNBC, CNN, ABC News, NBC News and CBS News, one can turn to Fox News Channel and watch Bret Baier, Tucker Carlson and Sean Hanni- ty. For newspapers, pick up The Wall Street Journal, The Wash- ington Times or the Washington Examiner. Try listening to Rush Limbaugh's and Mark Levin's ra- dio shows. By no means do I rec- ommend that liberals go cold tur- key on the mainstream media. They should start out by listen- ing to conservative media for only about five minutes per day to avoid shock. I am normally against any kind of insurance for a pre-exist- ing medical condition, but I'd make an exception for TDS. Finally, when I think of some of the wacky presidential predic- tions, my mind immediately turns to 1997, when the comet Hale- Bopp appeared. Art Bell's para- normal radio talk show, "Coast Strangers in a familiar place Continued on page 8 My Point of View by Dr. H. K. Fenol, Jr., M.D. November 11 is Veterans Day. I had a chance to meet some veter- ans of W WII when I started prac- tice in Pike County in 1978. I was surprised several of the patients who came to the office shared with me their experiences in my coun- try of origin. They mentioned places I know quite well such as the University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Ma- nila where many American civil- ians and military were imprisoned. I heard stories of the buildings they liberated and where I studied dur- ing my college years. They men- tioned provinces where they bold- ly went into pursuing the Japanese forces and defeating them. So I had interesting conversa- tions about the sights and sounds of what they had seen and expe- rienced. I made sure they under- stood the gratitude of our Filipi- no people. These veterans were in their late sixties and seventies when I met them and most of them Veterans Day Continued on page 8 Continued on page 8 In the world of real estate, lit- erally anything can happen, right up until the closing papers are signed, and even after. Which is why I'm just now let- ting out that we are moving! We've got a long road ahead of us to actually live in our new home, but we love it already. Great neighborhood, great location (yes, neighborhood and location are two different things!), and plenty of space to raise a family. Plus eternal servitude to a mortgage company at no extra charge! Ha, ha, haha- hahahaheheheahahaha! Haaa... *sobbing* Anyway, now that we've got this big empty house, we've gotta have a plan for filling it up, or we could end up living in a tastefully-built dump before you can say "pack rat." We're cleaning now, and nor- mally, the next step would be to paint, but we actually like what the previous owners did with the walls. So that leaves finishing the upstairs, arranging the furniture, and storing all our crap where Flannery and her unborn sibling won't be able to constantly strew it about the floor. That last bit is where I'm tak- ing the lead in our planning pro- cess. See, our current house was nice and neat, and everything had a place. Then, we had a baby. Now, part of Flannery's daily routine is pulling all the books off the book- shelves, emptying the DVD cabi- net, dragging the tablecloth and its contents onto the floor, moving all Diamond's food into her water bowl, and laying out all the trav- el soaps on the bathroom floor by color. Now, of course, you could argue we should just be spanking her more, but I'm a big fan of the con- cept of a baka-yoke—in plain Eng- lish, a process that is designed to be failsafe, even for a total idiot. I believe we can baka-yoke the heck out of our storage plan so that it's impossible for even idiots like us to have to deal with the sheer quan- tity of stuff that we're currently picking up off the floor every cou- ple days. Part of this will involve reducing the amount of stuff we own, and a bigger part will involve careful- ly planning where the remaining stuff goes. For example, if we get rid of all our DVD cases and buy a DVD storage book (or two—we have way too many DVDs), we can then store those DVDs atop a high shelf or inside a high cabinet where Flannery won't even bother trying to get into them. Of course, Pursuit of the Cure by Star Parker Free the tax code from special interests A big tax bill is all it takes to see how perverse and dysfunctional our government has become. Why are the halls of Congress now crawling with special inter- est lobbyists looking for opportu- nities to carve out some new ben- efit, or to protect existing special interests in the tax code? The objective of the tax bill Re- publicans want to piece together is noble. Make the code more simple, logical and easy to use. The tax code should be an exercise in civ- ic responsibility in which all par- ticipate to pay for the legitimate functions of government. But what are those legitimate functions of government? What happened to that discussion? Why when the plate goes around in church do all feel privileged to contribute and participate in a no- ble cause? And why when govern- ment collects our taxes do we want to run and hide? The answer, of course, is sim- ple. What goes on in Washington is no longer a reflection, in Lin- coln's famous words, of govern- ment "of the people, by the peo- ple, for the people." The tax code has be- come an instrument of government pow- er brokers to extract money from private citizens to finance pet schemes of Washing- ton's political class. According to Amer- ican Enterprise Insti- tute economist and blogger Mark Perry, some 70 per- cent of the federal budget, about $2.6 trillion, is transfer payments – funds recycled from one set of private citizens to others. Most of federal government spending is not about paying for functions of government, but for social en- gineering, meddling in our lives. According to the Tax Founda- tion, compliance with the U.S. tax code consumed, in 2016, 8.9 bil- lion hours at a cost of $409 billion. Per Giving USA, total private charitable contributions in the U.S. in the same year, 2016, came to $ 390 billion. We spend more complying with the tax code than what we give in private charity. The $ 390 billion in charitable giving comes to about 2 per- cent of our GDP. The Biblical guideline for charity is the tithe, 10 percent. From this per- spective, Americans sound stingy. Are we? No, I don't think so. Much of our charitable spirit is swept up by government. According to the Congressional Budget Office, federal government spending on welfare and anti-pov- erty programs in 2016 was $750 billion. If we look at our welfare and anti-poverty spending as gov- ernment mandated compassion, it comes out to almost twice what we give in private charity. Or about 4 percent of GDP. Government wel- fare and anti-poverty spending