The Press-Dispatch
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The Press-Dispatch Wednesday, November 29, 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 Allow me to reminisce with a me- morial to our beagle who slipped away into eternity last week. I am sure all pet owners can identify with how we are feeling. For a variety of reasons while growing up, our dad wouldn't let us have a dog, and I really didn't give it much thought to own one for 46 years, until one of our daugh- ters rescued a female beagle/ter- rier mix from the local animal shel- ter and sneaked her into the house as a present for me. A granddaugh- ter named her Lady. Well, my wife after much pro- testing decided the dog could stay after she had 49 baths to erase the animal shelter smell on her. Over a short period of time, La- dy knew when I said go to your house meant that she was to go to her kennel to sleep. Well, that didn't last long because I didn't like the idea of her being in a locked cage at night. With a lot of training, she could stand on her hind legs and dance, sit, lie down, [shake hands with some coaxing], stop [heel], and come to us. Also, I could take her favorite toy and bone away from her without being bitten [a lot of growling took place]. I learned all pets have person- alities. Dogs and cats are not krill or act like a school of fish. She at times responded to my commands quickly, and at other times at her leisure. When she had dumped the trash over while we were not home, she would not be at the usual place at the door to greet us; and when I would yell at her to come here, she would slowly ap- pear with tail tucked between her back legs, her head down, and her "I'm sorry" eyes looking up. She had the run of the place when we lived south of Terre Haute, and the back yard [about ¼ acre] was fenced in. She loved to run and had her own private en- trance open 24 hours a day. She was still a pup when we lived there, and she had this urge to bury my wife's sous-vêtements, which I often found when the lawn- mower hit one. I watched her age, and we could see subtle changes in her energy level, her facial hair became light- er, her eyes had the beginnings of cataracts, and her hearing wasn't as good. But what I think I learned and appreciat- ed about Lady is that she was a compan- ion. Wherever I went, she wanted to go. She loved riding in vehi- cles. Though small, I had to train her not to push the grandchil- dren away with her body and nose as she would stand between them and me. I was hers, and she was not going to share. She also learned to tolerate the cat. They would chase each other about the house at times and ac- tually wrestle but their "fights" would end in a tie. Lady even tol- erated the cat to lay next to her and preen her. One enduring trait she had was that she always wanted to know where I was. If I were out of sight and at home, she would check on me regularly or find me and lie down next to me. Lady was a companion, and I un- Minority View by Walter E. Williams The Weekly by Alden Heuring Diversity obsession Points to Ponder by Rev. Ford Bond All good things come from God Gov. programs sapping America's spirit Heritage Viewpoint by Edwin J. Feulner Anyone who has ever seen foot- age of a "Black Friday" stampede knows the holiday season can bring out the worst in people. So it's important to remember that it can also bring out the best – and to realize that government can inad- vertently dampen our more com- passionate impulses. Something about the season en- courages us to be more charitable. As Scrooge's nephew observes in Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," it's the one time of year "when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut- up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they real- ly were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of crea- tures bound on other journeys." One of the ways we do that is by volunteering to help at shelters, soup kitchens and other places that assist the poor. Indeed, we even overdo it: A recent article in USA Today was headlined "Why You Shouldn't Volunteer at a Soup Kitchen This Thanks- giving" – for the sim- ple reason that too many do so. "Many charities, especially smaller ones, can be over- whelmed by an in- flux of one-time vol- unteers," writes N'dea Yancey-Bragg. Adds Eileen Heis- man, CEO of the National Philan- thropic Trust, "If you really want to volunteer, pick any day, but don't pick Thanksgiving or the day after Thanksgiving," Especially because – irony alert – overall volunteerism is actually down, according to figures from the U.S. Department of Labor. A chart in the 2017 Index of Culture and Opportunity shows the per- centage of adults volunteering dropped 3.9 percentage points be- tween 2005 and 2015. Yet an accompany- ing essay in the in- dex insists that we shouldn't assume we're becoming a less generous people. "America is not losing compassion," writes James Whitford, co- founder and execu- tive director of Wa- tered Gardens Gos- pel Rescue Mission and the True Charity Initiative. "It is just being crowded out." The culprit? Government. As Mr. Whitford points out: • "When a single mother re- ceives welfare benefits that exceed $12 per hour, she is less likely to show up at our Methodist church's dress-for-interview clothing minis- try, and so are the volunteers who A common feature of our time is the extent to which many in our nation have become preoccupied with diversity. But true diversi- ty obsession, almost a mania, is found at our institutions of high- er learning. Rather than have a knee-jerk response for or against diversity, I think we should ask just what is diversity and whether it's a good thing. How do we tell wheth- er a college, a department or an- other unit within a college is di- verse or not? What exemptions from diversity are permitted? Seeing as college presidents and provosts are the main diver- sity pushers, we might start with their vision of diversity. Ask your average college president or pro- vost whether he even bothers pro- moting political diversity among faculty. I'll guarantee that if he is honest — and even bothers to an- swer the question — he will say no. According to a recent study, pro- fessors who are registered Dem- ocrats outnumber their Republi- can counterparts by a 12-1 ratio (http://tinyurl.com/gpp4svq). In some departments, such as histo- ry, Democratic professors outnum- ber their Republican counterparts by a 33-1 ratio. The fact is that when college presidents and their diversity co- terie talk about diversity, they're talking mostly about pleasing mixtures of race. Years ago, they called their agenda affirmative ac- tion, racial preferences or racial quotas. Not only did these terms fall out of favor but also voters ap- proved initiatives banning choos- ing by race. Courts found some of the choosing by race unconstitu- tional. That meant that the race people had to repackage their agenda. That repackaging became known as diversity. Some race peo- ple were bold enough to argue that "diversity" produces educational benefits to all students, including white students. Nobody has both- ered to scientifically establish what those benefits are. For ex- ample, does a racially diverse stu- dent body lead to higher scores on graduate admissions tests, such as the GRE, L SAT and MCAT? By the way, Israel, Japan and South Ko- rea are among the world's least ra- cially diverse nations. In terms of academic achievement, their stu- dents run circles around diversi- ty-crazed Americans. There is one area of college life where administrators demonstrate utter contempt for diversity, and that's in sports. It is by no means unusual to watch a Saturday af- ternoon college basketball game and see that the starting five on both teams are black. White play- ers, not to mention Asian play- ers, are underrepresented. Sim- ilar underrepresentation is prac- ticed in college football. Where you find whites overrepresent- ed in both sports is on the cheer- leading squads, which are mostly composed of white women. If you were to explore this lack of racial diversity in sports with a college president, he might answer, "We look for the best players, and it so happens that blacks dominate." I would totally agree but ask him whether the same policy of choos- ing the best applies to the college's admissions policy. Of course, the honest answer would be a flat-out no. The most important issue re- lated to college diversity obses- sion is what happens to black stu- dents. Black parents should not al- low their sons and daughters to fall victim to the diversity hustle, even if the diversity hustler is a black official of the college. Black par- ents should not allow their sons and daughters to attend a college where they would not be admitted if they were white. A good rule of thumb is not to allow your children to attend a college where their SAT score is 200 or more points below the average of that college. Keep in mind that students are not qual- ified or unqualified in any absolute sense. There are more than 4,800 colleges — a college for most any- body. The bottom-line question for black parents and black peo- ple in general is: Which is better, a black student's being admitted to an elite college and winding up in the bottom of his class or flunk- ing out or being admitted to a less prestigious college and perform- A feast worth sharing Continued on page 8 Continued on page 8 Thanksgiving has come and gone, but our fridges are likely all still full of yummy leftovers. We scored invites to no less than four family Thanksgivings, and having just finished the last of those, my fingers are about the only muscles I can move. Times like these—times when I'm lying bloated and sleepy on a warm couch, that is—are perfect opportunities to step back and re- alize just how blessed we all are. I mean, let's just review everything we had to eat this past week. My list includes (but is not limited to): ENTRÉES Herb-roasted turkey, orange- stuffed turkey, smoked turkey (yup, three different turkey rec- ipes), pineapple ham, pizza and breadsticks, roast beef, and bar- becue spare ribs. A spread of dead animals fit for a king! SIDE DISHES, GARNISHES AND CONDIMENTS Yeast rolls, crescent rolls, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, sweet potato casserole, Brussels sprouts (well, just one, to be po- lite), green beans, green bean cas- serole, cheesy broccoli, macaroni and cheese, cranberry casserole (I didn't even hack it back up this year!), cranberry gelatin, cranber- ry compote, stuffing, dressing, a stuffing/dressing hybrid (avant- garde stuff here), corn casserole, brown gravy, white gravy and beige gravy. Who made up the word "casserole," anyway? And the best for last... DESSERTS Pumpkin pie, pecan pie, apple pie, wildberry cream puffs, peach cream pie, more pumpkin pie, date pudding, key lime pie and apple pie. I think a list like that would be enough to get me the guillotine in revolutionary France. Anyway, I don't just share this list of food to show off how much I can stuff in my gut, or just to fill up column space (though those are both important factors). What I want to show is just how many good things—in this case, how much good food—can come out of families coming together around the table. It's important to savor these times together, regardless of all the snubs and grudges and mis- understandings we all drag to the table with us every year. You can't control whether your aunt will be rude to you, but you can control whether you'll be rude back, or re- spond with love—and yeah, some- times the most love a person can muster is to simply mutter "hmm" and take an extra-large bite of their roll instead of starting a fight. But just as important as shar- ing love with our family is letting that love overflow into the rest of our lives. We're all headed back to work this week—except for all my retired readers, that is. I bet there's plenty of people at each of our jobs that we're thankful we don't share a Thanksgiving dinner with, because they're just insuffer- able idiots and can't do anything right to save their lives. Right? I know I've got a few. Let's share a piece of grandma's leftover pumpkin pie with them anyway. PressDispatch.net/ Subscribe net edition • Exclusive Video • All color photos • Search current and back issues with Add NETedtion to your paper subscription for just $5 Continued on page 8 Continued on page 8 Privileged American liberals are unsympathetic to besieged Israelis Lucid Moments by Bart Stinson The prime minister of Israel is reportedly on the brink of dismiss- ing his young deputy foreign min- ister, Tzipi Hotovely, for giving of- fense to leftist U.S. Jews. Hotovely, 38, is a member of the Israeli par- liament, so she won't be out of work if Benjamin Netanyahu kicks her out of his coalition government. But I hope she gets a fair hearing on the merits of her comments, and won't simply be thrown under the bus to appease petulant American liberals. A campus Jewish student orga- nization (Hillel) disinvited Hoto- vely on the day she was to speak at Princeton University, because Jewish leftists protested against the event. She attributed her poor treatment in America to a "liber- al dictatorship" that suppresses free speech and academic free- dom. Rather than denounce the anti-democratic campus environ- ment, a television interviewer in- terrogated Hotovely about the wan- ing support for Israel among Amer- ican Jews, especially Millennials, as if it were her fault. Of U.S. Jews who are unsym- pathetic to the Jewish state in Is- rael, she speculated generously that they might be "too young to remember what it is like to be a Jewish per- son without a Jewish state. The other issue is not understanding the complexity of the region." Then she really stepped on some Amer- ican toes. "People that never send their children to fight for their country, most of the Jews don't have children serving as soldiers, going to the Marines, going to A f- ghanistan, or to Iraq. Most of them are having quite convenient lives. They don't feel how it feels to be attacked by rockets, and I think part of it is to actually experience what Israel is dealing with on a dai- ly basis." This wasn't always true. There is a proud history of Jews serving in the American uniform, includ- ing young Private Henry Kissing- er at the Battle of the Bulge, and Admiral Hyman Rickover, father of the nuclear submarine force. The current Air Force Chief of Staff, Gen. David Lee Gold- fein, is a Jew. The oldest U.S. vet- eran organization is Jewish War Veter- ans, formed after the end of the Civil War. It was founded partly to dispel the convention- al wisdom that Jews hadn't shoul- dered their fair share of the bur- dens. But now even active-duty Jewish personnel say that fellow Jews are few and far between in the military. One career Air Force officer recalled he had trouble find- ing a quorum of 10 observant Jews at every base he was ever assigned to. When I was in the Army in the 1970s, I only remember two Jews: one a private like me, and one a pla- toon sergeant. Both were outstand- ing, exemplary soldiers. The Pew Research Center es-