The Press-Dispatch
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B-4 Wednesday, April 4, 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 Lent and the celebration of Eas- ter have passed for 2018, but the hope of all eternity remains fresh. The hope of all creation is tied to the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and that event's validity rests up- on the eyewitness testimony found in the gospels and writings of the apostles. Judge Judy, on her television show, is fastidious about eyewit- ness testimony. Litigants on her show are not permitted to testify as to what someone else said to them to bolster their case. If a person's testimony is needed, she says, that person should have brought them to court [Perry Mason was a stick- ler to best evidence]! As a jurist, Judge Judy believes eyewitnesses are the best evi- dence, and the best eyewitness is one who has no dog in the fight (has a personal stake in this is- sue). A walk through the story of Christ's Passion and Resurrection reiterates the glory of God! Thousands of people witnessed the death of Jesus on the cross in Jerusalem. Except for the most ex- treme critic, no one disputes that fact! The Jewish histo- rian Josephus records this event: "Now there was about this time Je- sus, a wise man, for he was a doer of wonder- ful works, a teacher. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gen- tiles. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; and the tribe of Chris- tians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day" (The Works of Josephus, The Antiquities of the Jews 18.63) A fter securing Jesus' death, the religious authorities were deter- mined to quash this "Jesus sect" lest it would spread. They knew of Jesus' teaching and His claim that He would rise from the dead: The gospel reads, "On the next day, which followed the Day of Prepa- ration, the chief priests and Phar- isees gathered togeth- er to Pilate, saying, Sir, we remember, while He was still alive, how that deceiver said, 'A f- ter three days I will rise.' Therefore com- mand that the tomb be made secure until the third day, lest His dis- ciples come by night and steal Him away, and say to the people, He has risen from the dead. So the last decep- tion will be worse than the first." Pilate gave them the guard they requested. The religious authori- ty's desire for Pilate to secure the tomb would play right into God's hands. As the darkness gave way to dawn on Sunday, and three days since Jesus died without warn- ing there was a great earthquake and an angel of the Lord came and rolled back the stone from Minority View by Walter E. Williams The Weekly by Alden Heuring How ignorant we are Points to Ponder by Rev. Ford Bond Eyewitness to the power of God How President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative was a game-changer Heritage Viewpoint by Edwin J. Feulner It's obvious why the bluster and brinksmanship over the nucle- ar-missile situation between the U.S. and North Korea produces so much tension: If an ICBM were launched at us or one of our allies, what could we do? We're not completely vulnera- ble, though, and for a very good reason: We have a missile-defense system in place. And for that, we can thank the man who unveiled the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) 35 years ago. President Reagan's address to the nation on March 23, 1983, was a real game- changer. How ironic that a president de- rided by his critics as a war-mon- ger would be the one to envision a world in which nuclear missiles were rendered virtually powerless. Yet it was this so-called "cowboy" who looked at the policy that had governed relations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union for de- cades, and realized that it had to change. That policy, known as "mutual- ly assured destruc- tion," or MAD, basi- cally amounted to a stalemate. The peace was kept solely be- cause each side pos- sessed more than enough firepower to retaliate on a massive scale. But this policy meant that each side also had every incen- tive to keep adding more and bigger ICBMs to keep from falling behind. "Somehow this didn't seem to me to be something that would send you to bed feeling safe," Mr. Reagan wrote in his autobiogra- phy. "It was like having two West- erners standing in a saloon aim- ing their guns at each other's head — permanently. There had to be a better way." There was. Mr. Reagan spoke with the Joint Chiefs of Staff about the feasibility of that new way: cre- ating a system that would destroy incoming ICBMs be- fore they could deliv- er their deadly pay- load. They agreed that it was an idea worth exploring — and SDI was born. It wasn't with- out controversy, of course. Skeptics said you couldn't "hit a bul- let with a bullet." Ma- ny successful tests later, we know otherwise. But even before we had a track record to point to, you have to ask yourself why anyone would be unwilling to try. Wouldn't it be an improvement over the status quo? The Soviets, of course, weren't buying it. They were convinced it was a ruse, a trick, a bargaining chip of some kind. The idea that the American president was actu- Happy Easter! The tradition behind Easter egg hunts Continued on page 5 Continued on page 5 Continued on page 5 Continued on page 5 Continued on page 5 Race relations: Are we smarter than eighth graders? Lucid Moments by Bart Stinson April 4, 1968 had been a good day for me. My eighth-grade school year was winding down, the sun was staying up later, and my friends and I played basketball at an asphalt court til our moms made us come home. We lived in Union County, Kentucky, about four or five hours from Memphis, and it was already warm. It was a racially diverse staff housing area a few miles outside the town, and none of us were lo- cals. Our parents worked at a near- by federal facility, part of President Johnson's "Great Society." We had more in common with neighbors of a different race than we had with local townspeople of our own hue. Then April 5 dawned and, over pop tarts, we watched television reports that Martin Luther King Jr. had been shot down on a Lor- raine Motel balcony, and that St. Joseph's Hospital doctors had pro- nounced him dead at age 39. I'd been to Memphis a few times, but only in transit. The first time, my grandfather had to shoo me off the colored water fountain at the train station. He didn't want any problems with local (white Democrat) au- thorities. We were traveling during Spring Break on a train that ran from Chicago to Lou- isiana. We almost had the train to ourselves southbound. But on our way north, it was stuffed with Black women and children. It was part of "the great migration" from the Cot- ton South to northern cities, Chi- cago in this case. Many of them smelled bad, in need of a shower. Their grooming was minimal dur- ing a time when people dressed up to travel. Some brought their clothes in grocery sacks instead of suitcases. I thought they were too poor to buy luggage, but I saw on a doc- umentary years later that some of them had to sneak onto the northbound trains in the mid- dle of the night, slipping past pa- trols employed by white landown- ers who wanted to stop the hemorrhage of cheap agricultural labor from the Delta country. Maybe those brown paper sacks were part of the sub- terfuge. Even at age 10, I could tell that some of the Black mothers looked scared when they got on the northbound train. The grievances were not imagi- nary in the time of Martin Luther King. Oppression was real. It was a dark and gloomy ride to town April 5 on the school bus. I didn't know what to say to the Black kids. I'm not sure, even now, what I could have said. The other white kids didn't say anything, ei- ther. The bus delivered us to the Junior High curb in silence. But during the school day, we re- verted to tribe. I felt that my Black My Point of View by Dr. H. K. Fenol, Jr., M.D. Here's a question for you: In 1950, would it have been possi- ble for anyone to know all of the goods and services that we would have at our disposal 50 years lat- er? For example, who would have thought that we'd have cellphones, Bluetooth technology, small pow- erful computers, L ASIK and air- planes with 525 -passenger seat- ing capacity? This list could be extended to include thousands of goods and services that could not have been thought of in 1950. In the face of this gross human ig- norance, who should be in control of precursor goods and services? Seeing as it's impossible for any- one to predict the future, any kind of governmental regulation should be extremely light-handed, so as not to sabotage technological ad- vancement. Compounding our ignorance is the fact that much of what we think we know is not true. Scientomet- rics is the study of measuring and analyzing science, technology and innovation. It holds that many of the "facts" you know have a half- life of about 50 years. Let's look at a few examples. You probably learned that Pluto is a planet. But since August 2006, Pluto has been considered a dwarf planet. It's just another object in the Kuiper belt. Because dinosaurs were seen as members of the class Reptilia, they were thought to be coldblooded. But recent research suggests that dinosaurs were fast-metabolizing endotherms whose activities were unconstrained by temperature. Years ago, experts argued that increased K-12 spending and low- er pupil-teacher ratios would boost students' academic performance. It turned out that some of the worst academic performance has been at schools spending the most mon- ey and having the smallest class sizes. Washington, D.C., spends more than $29,000 per student every year, and the teacher-stu- dent ratio is 1-to-13; however, its students are among the nation's poorest-performing pupils. At one time, astronomers con- sidered the size limit for a star to be 150 times the mass of our sun. But recently, a star (R136a1) was discovered that is 265 times the mass of our sun and had a birth weight that was 320 times that of our sun. If you graduated from medical school in 1950, about half of what you learned is either wrong or out- dated. For an interesting story on all this, check out Reason maga- zine (http://tinyurl.com/ydal- h37g). Ignorance can be devastating. Say that you recently purchased a house. Was it the best deal you could have gotten? Was there some other house within your bud- get that would have needed fewer extensive repairs 10 years later and had more likable neighbors and a better and safer environment for your children? What about the person you married? Was there another person available to you who would have made for a more pleasing and compatible spouse? Though these are important ques- tions, the most intelligent answer you can give to all of them is: "I don't know." If you don't know, who should be in charge of mak- ing those decisions? Would you delegate the responsibility to Nan- cy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Donald Trump, Ben Carson or some other national or state official? You might say, "Stop it, Wil- liams! Congressmen and oth- er public officials are not mak- ing such monumental decisions affecting my life." Try this. Sup- pose you are a 22-year-old healthy person. Rather than be forced to spend $ 3,000 a year for health in- surance and have $7,000 deducted from your salary for Social Securi- ty, you'd prefer investing that mon- ey to buy equipment to start a land- scaping business. Which would be the best use of the $10,000 you earned — purchasing health insur- ance and paying into Social Secu- rity or starting up a landscaping business? More importantly, who would be better able to make that decision — you or members of the United States Congress? The bottom line is that igno- rance is omnipresent. The worst kind of ignorance is not knowing just how ignorant we are. That leads to the devastating pretense Resurrection Sunday has come and gone, but the Easter season is just beginning. Easter is a 50 -day long celebration season, and while there are plenty of obvious ways to celebrate—like my personal favor- ite, eating lots of candy—perhaps the best way to celebrate the sea- son is the corporal works of mercy. They are: 1. Feed the hungry 2. Give water to the thirsty 3. Clothe the naked 4. Shelter the homeless 5. Visit the sick 6. Ransom the captive 7. Bury the dead I'm not going to belabor you with a sermon on each of these, but let's think for a second how easy, at the very least, the first two works of mercy can be. Many of us in this country are conditioned to believe that a ma- jority of beggars are either drug addicts or frauds. What we forget is this: it doesn't matter what kind of person they are. We have been ordered in no uncertain terms to help those in need, and it's not up to us to decide whether someone is righteous enough to deserve our help. So, for example, if I see a guy begging on the street corner by the gas station while I'm filling up, and I don't get that guy a Snickers bar and a bottle of water, his hun- ger is my fault, because I was able to help and chose not to. A Snick- ers bar and a bottle of water will run me about $ 3 tops—I won't even notice that after paying $ 30 for gas anyway. Easy, right? Of course, it's not always easy to do the right thing. Sometimes we're dealing with a bunch of our own problems. Sometimes we're in a big hurry. Sometimes we're just shy. But we've got 50 days of Easter ahead of us. I challenge you—and my- self—to do just one good thing a day this Easter. Here's hoping they add up! It's a little late to discuss this matter but I think it's never too late to learn something about sub- jects that interest us. So the past week I did a little reading about Easter. And about the Easter egg hunt. Apparently the word Easter, also called Pascha (Greek and Lat- in) is well known to all Christians as a festival and holiday celebrat- ing the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, three days after he was crucified and buried. I think the story is very well un- derstood practically by the Chris- tian believers. Now what I was not too clear about was the reason for the Easter egg hunt. So I kept read- ing up on this subject, and I kind of think I had the correct idea since I became exposed to the Easter egg hunt custom. That the Easter egg apparently is a symbol of the empty tomb, and the Easter lily as a sym- bol of the resurrection, the Eas- ter bunny for which I cant' find a good correlation, though mention was made it is analogous to Santa Claus in the American culture -as a gift giving character. Regarding the Easter parades, I understand it as a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus and the triumph over death. The Easter egg tradition took different forms. In some countries, the eggs were made from chocolates, some from porcelain beautifully decorated with jewels and precious stones, some made from plastic. The pre- vailing feeling in everybody's mind is that the egg is a symbol of new life and rebirth.