The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/947382
B-6 Wednesday, Februar y 28, 2018 The Press-Dispatch 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 Are school assaults the new nor- mal; that is a ghastly thought! Historically, mass killings run the spectrum from a few individ- uals to millions. The perpetrators are despotic leaders to "ordinary" people. I do not mean to be cava- lier or callous, but a brief review of history will open one's eyes. Ranking at the top of any list of mass killings and barbarism finds Genghis Khan, the 13th century Mongol who, it is estimated, killed between 40 and 100 million people. Allow me to skip the World Wars and Communists bloodbaths of the 20th century where well over 100 million people were killed in less than 50 years. The Michigan Bath School Mas- sacre was the first American mass murder of school children. Andrew Kehoe dynamited the Bath Con- solidated School building in May 1927. The explosion killed 38 chil- dren and 6 adults. He also killed his wife and took his own life at the school. August 1, 1966, the University of Texas at Austin was under siege from a sniper from its bell tower. When the police were finally able to take out twenty-five year old Charles Whitman, he had killed 16 people and wounded 31. Timothy McVeigh used a fertilizer bomb to destroy the Mur- rah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. The ex- plosion killed 159 adults, 19 chil- dren, and injured 684. More than 300 buildings in the area were damaged. July 22, 2011, Anders Behring Breivik went on a shooting spree and took out his rage against the Swedish government with a car bomb, and then a second attack on a summer camp operated by the Workers Youth League. In the two massacres, he killed 77 adults and teenagers and injured 319. What is the common denomina- tor among the killers of our chil- dren, and those bent on mass kill- ings? For over a century, science has been trying to de- cipher if the cause is genetics or one's phys- ical makeup that pro- pels a person to kill. Franz Gall in the 19th century advanced "phrenology," which is based upon the shape and size of the skull with its dips, folds, and rises as a map to per- sonality. Discarded! In the 1940s, psychologist Wil- liam Sheldon categorized the hu- man physique in what he called "somatotypes." His suggestion was certain body builds are more likely to be involved in a crime than others. Rejected! The murders of eight nursing students in Chicago in July 1966 by Richard Speck set off a scientific race to determine if his having an extra Y chromosome [X Y Y] could explain his violence. Discarded. Minority View by Walter E. Williams The Weekly by Alden Heuring Automation killing our jobs? Points to Ponder by Rev. Ford Bond The evil within Why the U.S. must trash the tariffs Heritage Viewpoint by Edwin J. Feulner The stronger economy we're en- joying now is no accident. Lower taxes, more jobs and fewer regu- lations are creating a much-need- ed boost. So why do we still have one foot on the brake? I'm referring to trade. Protec- tionist measures act as a drag on our progress. Indeed, they threat- en to undo much of it. Consider the tariffs and quotas that the Trump administration re- cently slapped on imports of solar cells and modules, large residen- tial washers, and washer parts. The price? As researcher Tori Whiting notes in a Daily Signal article, we get fewer jobs (rough- ly 23,000 American jobs this year, according to the Solar Energy In- dustries Association), higher pric- es for U.S. consumers, and retalia- tion from America's trading part- ners. Five of those partners — China, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea and the European Union — have filed complaints with the World Trade Organization over these tar- iffs. This begins the long process of determining if the U.S. is violat- ing Section 201 of the 1974 Trade Act. If the answer is yes, these countries can begin putting re- taliatory restrictions on our exports to them. That's hardly a recipe for econom- ic growth here in the U.S. Or look at the steep tariffs the administra- tion has levied on Ca- nadian softwood lumber import- ed into the U.S. American lumber companies might cheer this, but how does it affect U.S. consum- ers? These tariffs "reach deep into new homebuyers' pockets, causing them to settle for smaller homes, or ones with fewer amenities," writes researcher Patrick Tyrell. "Some families opt to buy older homes, rather than new homes, hurting home construction jobs. Others drop out of the market al- together." And then there's the North American Free Trade Agreement. Last month in Montreal, President Trump's trade adviser, Ambassa- dor Robert Lighthiz- er, renewed the pres- ident's threat that the United States could withdraw from NAF- TA because in its cur- rent form, it is "really not a good agreement for the United States." But that's the key point — in its current form. When NAF TA was first proposed, I supported it enthusiastically. As a strong propo- nent of freedom, I know the pow- er of open trade. And NAF TA de- livered. But that was 25 years ago. Cell phones were in their infan- cy then. They were the size of a brick and could only make, well, phone calls. Today, most of us car- ry a small, powerful computer in our pocket that does a variety of things for us. Things change, tech- nology advances — often at aston- ishing speed — and NAF TA hasn't kept up, often to the detriment of Little Murder on the Prairie, part three Answering real questions Continued on page 8 Continued on page 8 Continued on page 8 Continued on page 8 Learn from Nazi Germany's gun control history Lucid Moments by Bart Stinson Contrary to popular misconcep- tion, the Nazis did not invent gun control in Germany. They inherit- ed the Law on Firearms and Am- munition from the freely elected, well-meaning regime that preced- ed them. The 1928 law required registration of guns and gun own- ers, in response to the epidem- ic of violent political clashes that had frightened decent Germans on their own streets. Something had to be done. But when the Nazis came to pow- er in 1933, they didn't just inherit the law. They inherited the lists. They now knew exactly who owned what, and where they were locat- ed. At first there were no midnight visits from the Gestapo. But anti- Nazi Germans found that govern- ment clerks quietly declined to re- new their annual permits. In some cases, they were revoked early. Then, in 1938, the Nazis ex- panded on the previous gun con- trols. They legislated handgun restrictions. Only politically reli- able Germans, mainly Nazi par- ty members, were allowed to pos- sess handguns. The registration lists provided a map for raids on citizens who failed to voluntari- ly surrender their weapons. A fter that, Nazi thugs and Gestapo could kick down doors and manhandle German men, women and children with im- punity. Some otherwise in- telligent Americans have scoffed at the idea that the Second Amendment protects us from tyranny. Sure- ly, they say, the gov- ernment's tanks, ar- tillery and helicopter gunships would make short work of any resistance by carbines and handguns. That's probably true. But car- bines and handguns precede heavy artillery. The putsches that seize political control over big gov- ernment firepower, the ability to deploy tanks, artillery and heli- copter gunships in the first place, are accomplished by intimidating or raiding political opponents who might object and resist. That first thuggish step is la- bor-intensive. Real flesh-and-blood hoodlums have to confront real op- ponents. Does it matter whether we have carbines and handguns? It matters to the hoodlums. That's how the Second Amend- ment deters tyranny - not by over- coming B-2 bombers and Apache helicopters, but by keeping our politi- cal transfers of power free of asymmetrical violence. They're not going to be able to car- pet-bomb our neigh- borhoods with gov- ernment aircraft un- less we first lay down our carbines and handguns in gentle obedience to nice men and wom- en from the government who are here to help us. Kristallnacht was inevitable af- ter implementation of the Nazi gun controls in 1938. But for good measure, the Nazis announced new regulations on the day after their rampage against synagogues and Jewish businesses in Germa- ny and newly annexed Austria. I don't call them gun regulations, because they prohibited Jews to possess weapons of any kind, in- cluding clubs or knives. I can only speculate that the new regulations were occasioned by Nazi hoodlums getting some unex- pected resistance during Kristall- nacht from Jews with sharp ob- My Point of View by Dr. H. K. Fenol, Jr., M.D. A recent article in The Guard- ian dons the foreboding title "Ro- bots will destroy our jobs — and we're not ready for it." The article claims, "For every job created by robotic automation, several more will be eliminated entirely. ... This disruption will have a devastating impact on our workforce." Accord- ing to an article in MIT Technology Review, business researchers Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McA fee believe that rapid technological change has been destroying jobs faster than it is creating them, con- tributing to the stagnation of me- dian income and the growth of in- equality in the United States. If technology is destroying jobs faster than it's creating them, it is the first time in human history that it's done so. Actually, the number of jobs is unlimited, for the simple reason that human wants are un- limited — or they don't frequently reveal their bounds. People always want more of something that will create a job for someone. To sug- gest that there are a finite number of jobs commits an error known as the "lump of labor fallacy." That fallacy suggests that when automa- tion or technology eliminates a job, there's nothing that people want that would create employment for the person displaced by the auto- mation. In other words, all human wants have been satisfied. Let's look at a few examples. In 1790, farmers were 90 percent of the U.S. labor force. By 1900, on- ly about 41 percent of our workers were employed in agriculture. To- day less than 3 percent of Amer- icans are employed in agricul- ture. And it's a good thing. If 90 percent or 41 percent of our labor force were still employed in agri- culture, where in the world would we find the workforce to produce all those goods and services that weren't around in 1790 or 1900, such as cars, aircraft, T Vs, com- puters, aircraft carriers, etc.? In- deed, if technology had not de- stroyed all of those agricultural jobs, we would be a much, much poorer nation. What about the claim that our manufacturing jobs are going to China — a claim that's fueling the Trump administration to impose trade barriers? It is true that be- tween 2001 and 2013, 3.2 million jobs were outsourced to China. However, in the same time frame, China lost about 4.5 million manu- facturing jobs, compared with the loss of 3.1 million in the U.S. Job loss is the trend among the top 10 manufacturing countries, which produce 75 percent of the world's manufacturing output (the U.S., Japan, Germany, China, Britain, France, Italy, South Korea, Can- ada and Mexico). Only Italy has managed not to lose factory jobs since 2000. Nonetheless, the U.S. remains a major force in global manufacturing. Because of automation, the U.S. worker is now three times as pro- ductive as in 1980 and twice as pro- ductive as in 2000. It's productivi- ty gains, rather than outsourcing and imports, that explain most of our manufacturing job loss. If our manufacturing sector were its own economy and had its own gross domestic product, it would be the seventh-largest in the world. Total manufacturing value could be as high as $5.5 tril- lion. In other words, about 17 per- cent of global manufacturing activ- ity happens in the United States, and America dominates advanced manufacturing. According to the Alliance for American Manufactur- ing, U.S. manufacturing employs a large percentage of the workers who are trained in fields related to science, technology, engineer- ing and math. It employs 37 per- cent of architectural and engineer- ing workers and 16 percent of life, physical and social scientists. Economist Joseph Schumpeter described this process of techno- logical change. He called it "cre- ative destruction." Technology and innovation destroy some jobs while creating many others. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. labor force in 1950 was 62 million. By 2000, it was 79 million, and it's projected to reach 192 mil- lion by 2050. Though the "creative destruction" process works hard- ships on some people who lose their jobs and are forced to take lower-paying jobs, any attempt to impede the process would make all of us worse off. Therese and David sat facing each other at the dinner table. They were alone now. The young- est of the girls had been married that morning. A light snow was dusting down outside as the cou- ple said grace. "My favorite," David said as Therese uncovered the plates, and Therese nodded back. He still looked young and strong, but her age was beginning to show. De- spite that, Therese felt energetic. Over the years, she'd made David show her how to do all the chores a man took care of—all the things John had done when he was alive. She could split the logs and mend the fence, and just about anything else that needed done. And she felt especially good today. This was a special day. "You know, this was John's fa- vorite too," Therese said as David dug into his supper. "He was a good man," David re- plied between bites. He always said that when John's name came up. Just that. Therese folded her hands in her lap and watched David eat for a moment. "Yes," she said. "He was." Another moment. "Are you enjoying the food? " David looked up at her, and found her staring holes into him. "It is my favorite, after all," he stammered. There was something about her gaze that made him uneasy. "You know, David... it was a smart trick, what you did." David stopped chewing. He was starting to feel a little queasy. "What do you mean? " "Using the snow to cover your footsteps, and all that, and then of- fering to help us through the win- ter. That threw folks right off the trail, you know. It was all quite smart." "I don't know what you're talk- ing about," David said. He felt cold sweat seeping out of him—and he knew exactly what Theresa was talking about. "David, just listen..." Therese stood up and walked around the ta- ble to put a hand on David's shoul- der. She looked down at him. "I knew. I always knew." Something hot and sickly rose in David's throat. He clutched the edges of the table with shaky knuckles. "But even though I knew, there was no getting around it—I need- ed you then. The girls were so small, and I'd never learned any- thing useful... David, are you lis- tening? " David's gut was burning, and spots This past week we have been inundated with the news of the school shootings at the Douglas High School in Florida. I watched the Town Hall Meeting on CNN. It is truly amazing and so admira- ble that our youth undertook this bold and big meeting, and it is in- deed truly gratifying that three of our lawmakers showed up to face many questions. Also, a representative from the NR A showed up and answered re- al tough questions. There are not enough words to describe the an- guish and sorrow of everyone, especially the parents and sib- lings and friends of those whose lives have been lost in this trage- dy. There were a lot of very good and tough questions. There were some heated exchanges at times