The Press-Dispatch
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The Press-Dispatch Wednesday, Januar y 24, 2018 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 We live in an era where every- one is offended about something. Soon we'll be offended at being of- fended. Life is full of offenses; some are accidental and inconsequen- tial, others are deliberate, and still there are those that come with life and who or what we are. All of us strive for a time which Martin Luther King Jr. defined as an era in which people will not be "judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their char- acter." Equality and equity is neither colorblind nor amoral; character has to be defined and by what stan- dards or by whom is that charac- ter defined? Therefore, to have virtue and morality has to be defined. For centuries or even millenni- ums, Western civilization had at its core the essence of Christian morality. It permeated into all as- pects of life, including sexuality, the family, business, civility and government. That is not to say that West- ern culture was stagnate. Over time, the status of in- dentured servitude, slavery, the rights of kings and civil lib- erties changed. But what did not change was the moral core of Christianity. But that also changed. Hilaire Bel- loc in his book The Great Heresies point to the erosion of the Bible as au- thoritative and the cataclysm that was World War I. The aftermath of the war placed social change on steroids; Belloc put it succinctly: "Everything about the old order came down with a crash." During the last few decades, we have witnessed the neutering of Christian values which have been replaced with moral anarchy. The agitation by social justice warriors and progressives have produced a culture that is quickly approach- ing the abandonment of all cus- toms, norms and tradition. Many of the social movements of the 20th century have evolved into the aggrieved becoming the persecutors. The logical conclu- sion or the last step of cultural anarchy is the implementation of hate speech (bias crimes statute.) What is hate speech; how and by whom will define it; what will be the penalty? This is a slippery slope. Indiana is considering such a bill that would allow a judge to consider if there was an element of hate or bias toward a victim of a crime. This creates a protected class of people which is antitheti- cal to our concept of equal protec- tion under the law. Defining a hate crime as some- thing deserving extrajudicial pun- ishment is just a step away from hate speech laws. Minority View by Walter E. Williams The Weekly by Alden Heuring Constitutional ignorance Points to Ponder by Rev. Ford Bond Hate speech: I'm offended Big government intrudes on cosmetology Heritage Viewpoint by Edwin J. Feulner Few things could be more Amer- ican than volunteering to help oth- ers. So it's a shame when our al- truism is thwarted by another, far more lamentable American trait: big government. Juan Carlos Montes de Oca knows firsthand. A cosmetology student from Tucson, Montes de Oca felt inspired when he heard about a barber in London who do- nated haircuts to the homeless on his days off. So he decided to do the same for homeless veterans in Arizona. He did this free of charge, of course, to give the veterans a bet- ter appearance and a more pos- itive outlook when applying for jobs. "Out of the kindness of my heart," he told a reporter. "Out of the memory of my mom, because she lost her hair." Well, we can't have that, can we? So to the rescue rides what the Ar- izona Republic referred to as "the hair police" – the Arizona State Board of Cosmetology. It turns out Mr. Montes de Oca was giving these haircuts despite the fact that he hadn't graduated from cosme- tology school. He was giving these cuts to homeless vets without a li- cense. What a monster. Grab the torches and pitchforks! It seems you can't just set up shop and start shearing locks in the Grand Canyon state, no matter how talented you may be. A state law requires 1,000 hours of train- ing at a state-licensed school. Mr. Montes de Oca wasn't the first Arizona resident to run afoul of government overseers. As Re- public reporter Kristin Haubrich noted: "A dozen years ago, they swooped down on a 23-year-old Glendale woman who was braid- ing the hair of A frican-Americans. The cosmetology cops informed Essence that she'd have to get a li- cense to do that which she'd been doing since she was 13 years old. "To get that license, she would have to take 1,600 hours of class- es at a state-approved cosmetology school, paying tuition of $10,000 or more to learn everything from how to cut and curl to how to manicure and massage. Everything, that is, but how to braid hair." The state legisla- ture passed a law to fix this, but then along came the case of Juana, a 24-year- old eyebrow threader. She had been doing this kind of work for eight years, but the "cosmetology cops" told her she'd have to stop. Only a licensed aesthetician could do such work. Juana, the Republic reported, would "need 600 hours of state- approved classes, learning every- thing from laser safety to Botox A good burger is hard to find PUZZLED ABOUT WHAT TO READ? ..and you will have your solution. subscribe to 812-354-8500 Continued on page 12 Continued on page 12 Continued on page 12 Hard to muster nostalgia for Obama administration Lucid Moments by Bart Stinson With the anniversary of Donald Trump's first year in office came a predictable, media-powered wave of nostalgia for the Obama presi- dency. Perhaps nobody was more nostalgic for the Obama regime, this time last year, than ex-Presi- dent Obama himself. "The American people are much better off today," he said in his fare- well speech in Chicago, "than be- fore I took office eight years ago." This claim would have been a good candidate for comedian Ar- senio Hall's running joke about "things that make you go hmm." Our national debt was $10.6 tril- lion when President Obama en- tered office. When he left office in 2017, our national debt was about $20 trillion. Each U.S. citizen's share of that debt was $ 31,000 when he entered office; each of us owed an average $ 61,340 on the na- tional debt by the time he left of- fice. Hmm. About 32 million Americans and immigrants were dependent on food stamps when he took of- fice. By the time he left office, that rose 36 percent to 43.6 million peo- ple. That's roughly parallel to the increase of Americans and immi- grants living in poverty: 38 mil- lion when Obama arrived, 45 mil- lion when he left. Hmm. Because so many people went on food stamps and dis- ability pensions during the Obama presidency, the labor force partic- ipation rate necessar- ily dropped. Or per- haps it's the other way around: maybe food stamps and disabili- ty pensions increased because labor partici- pation dropped. At any rate, 65.8 % of adults participated in the labor market when he arrived, 62.8 % when he left. Hmm. Not surprisingly, median house- hold income dropped from $57,744 in 2009 to $54,045 after eight years of Obama economic poli- cies. Hmm. In fairness, we can't really blame the Obama administration for the drop in the home ownership rate (from 67.3% in 2009 to 63.5% in 2017), because he arrived during the collapse of our mortgage sys- tem that was already in disarray during the Bush administration. However, as a community orga- nizer, he and his comrades deserve much of the blame for pressuring legislators and bank regulators to ensure mortgages for people who didn't qualify for them, and ulti- mately couldn't afford them. Any bankers who resisted them were branded racists who were "red- lining" the neighbor- hoods that commu- nity organizers like Obama purported to represent. Mr. Obama, in oth- er words, helped cre- ate the crisis that President Obama lat- er inherited. There are other before-and-after comparisons that are hard to quan- tify or reduce to statistics. Race re- lations got worse as the president just couldn't restrain himself from racially inflammatory comments. Law enforcement was under siege, not only by the criminal element, but by the president and his attor- ney general. The military shrunk and was gradually incapacitated. Many of the best officers were cashiered and replaced with ca- reerist sycophants. At least 365,000 unaccompanied foreign minors were accepted at the Mexican border. These chil- dren will raise one another, and be vulnerable not only to victim- Hillary Clinton blamed the Elec- toral College for her stunning de- feat in the 2016 presidential election in her latest memoirs, "What Hap- pened? " Some have claimed that the Electoral College is one of the most dangerous institutions in American politics. Why? They say the Electoral College system, as opposed to a sim- ple majority vote, distorts the one- person, one-vote principle of democ- racy because electoral votes are not distributed according to population. To back up their claim, they point out that the Electoral College gives, for example, Wyoming citizens dis- proportionate weight in a presiden- tial election. Put another way, Wy- oming, a state with a population of about 600,000, has one member in the U.S. House of Representatives and two members in the U.S. Senate, which gives the citizens of Wyoming three electoral votes, or one electoral vote per 200,000 people. California, our most populous state, has more than 39 million people and 55 elector- al votes, or approximately one vote per 715,000 people. Comparatively, individuals in Wyoming have nearly four times the power in the Elector- al College as Californians. Many people whine that using the Electoral College instead of the pop- ular vote and majority rule is undem- ocratic. I'd say that they are absolute- ly right. Not deciding who will be the president by majority rule is not de- mocracy. But the Founding Fathers went to great lengths to ensure that we were a republic and not a democ- racy. In fact, the word democracy does not appear in the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitu- tion or any other of our founding doc- uments. How about a few quotations ex- pressed by the Founders about de- mocracy? In Federalist Paper No. 10, James Madison wanted to pre- vent rule by majority faction, say- ing, "Measures are too often decid- ed, not according to the rules of jus- tice and the rights of the minor par- ty, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majori- ty." John Adams warned in a letter, "Remember Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a De- mocracy yet, that did not commit sui- cide." Edmund Randolph said, "That in tracing these evils to their origin, every man had found it in the tur- bulence and follies of democracy." Then-Chief Justice John Marshall observed, "Between a balanced re- public and a democracy, the differ- ence is like that between order and chaos." The Founders expressed con- tempt for the tyranny of majority rule, and throughout our Constitu- tion, they placed impediments to that tyranny. Two houses of Congress pose one obstacle to majority rule. That is, 51 senators can block the wishes of 435 representatives and 49 senators. The president can veto the wishes of 535 members of Congress. It takes two-thirds of both houses of Congress to override a presidential veto. To change the Constitution re- quires not a majority but a two-thirds vote of both houses, and if an amend- ment is approved, it requires ratifica- tion by three-fourths of state legisla- tures. Finally, the Electoral College is yet another measure that thwarts majority rule. It makes sure that the highly populated states — to- day, mainly 12 on the East and West coasts, cannot run roughshod over the rest of the nation. That forces a presidential candidate to take into consideration the wishes of the oth- er 38 states. Those Americans obsessed with rule by popular majorities might want to get rid of the U.S. Senate, where states, regardless of popula- tion, have two senators. Should we change representation in the House of Representatives to a system of pro- portional representation and elimi- nate the guarantee that each state gets at least one representative? Cur- rently, seven states with populations of 1 million or fewer have one repre- sentative, thus giving them dispro- portionate influence in Congress. While we're at it, should we make all congressional acts be majority rule? When we're finished with es- tablishing majority rule in Congress, should we then move to change our court system, which requires una- nimity in jury decisions, to a simple majority rule? My question is: Is it ignorance of or contempt for our Constitution that fuels the movement to abolish the Electoral College? Sometimes married life is hard, and you bicker about stupid things and forget to put the toilet seat down. Sometimes, married life is great, and you wake up to the smell of delicious hamburgers. Jill has been practicing her burger-flipping skills, and recent- ly she developed a new creation on the stovetop: "The Pr-EGG-nancy Burger." Or maybe the "Pepper- jack be Nimble Burger? " Naming food isn't an exact science. The dish is a double cheese- burger, with a slice of pepperjack underneath the bottom patty, an- other slice above the top patty, and a slice of Colby between the pat- ties. A fried egg goes between the top cheese and the top patty, and your favorite condiments go in be- tween the patties - Jill tried ranch and Tabasco on her first attempt, and ketchup and Tabasco on the second attempt. This arrangement keeps the buns from getting sog- gy, but won't protect your hands from drips, so be prepared for a messy lunch. We were snowed in and used cheap toast, but I suggest using a pretzel bun or thick slices of toasted dark rye if you're cook- ing to impress. Vegetables are al- so an option - try red onions, gua- camole, or raw cabbage. As the only person in the house capable of expressing complex opinions about food, Jill has treat- ed me to both iterations of the burger, and I am grateful to be alive on this wounded earth just for that. The interweaving of cheese and beef gives the burger a lay- ered texture. Of course, everyone knows what a burger tastes like, so I'll just emphasize that your quality of meat, cooking method, and seasonings are what make or break any patty. Don't be afraid of a little blood! Jill certainly isn't (except she makes her own burg- ers well done because she's preg- nant – but not mine, thank God.) I doubt we'll be snowed in again this winter, but anything is possi- ble in Indiana, so I encourage you all to try your hand at a new dish the next time you're stuck in the house for a while. And if you have a better name for this darn burger, email it to me at aheuring@sgstar- times.com, and I'll write your sug- gestion on a lettuce leaf and hide the leaf under Jill's pillow for her to find months later. Have a great week!