The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/976608
C-10 Wednesday, May 2, 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 Life throws curves often when we are not expecting it. Jesus said "In the world you will have tribu- lation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." Tribulation as used by Matthew in this passage means affliction and distress in the course of life and problems living in the world. Few people escape misfortunes of life. One of the greatest hymns of the church comes from a time of personal calamity. "It Is Well with My Soul" is like many of Psalms as it was written from personal ex- perience. Horatio Gates Spafford was a lawyer who had invested much of his money into Chicago real es- tate. The great Chicago fire of 1871 ravaged the city and Spafford lost most of his investment to the fire. For the next two years Horatio and his wife Anna devoted their time assisting the homeless, im- poverished, and grief-stricken ru- ined by the fire. In 1873 Spafford and his family decided to take a break and join some friends in Eu- rope—including well known evan- gelist Dwight Moody. They planned to go to England to join Moody and Ira San- key on one of their evangelistic crusades, and then travel in Eu- rope. Just before sail- ing Spafford was de- layed by real-estate business, but per- suaded his wife Anna to take their four girls on ahead and he would catch up to them in Paris. On November 15, 1873, the pas- sage ship Ville du Havre sailed from New York with 313 passen- gers and crew on board. Sev- en days later tragedy struck; at 2 am in the morning of Saturday, November 22, 1873 the Ville du Havre collided with a Scottish sail- ing ship, the Loch Earn, and sank within 12 minutes. Anna, was able to cling to a piece of floating wreckage but their her daughters Maggie, Tanetta, An- nie, and Bessie along with 222 other passengers perished (87 passengers and crew survived). Nine days later the survivors arrived at Cardiff, Wales. Mrs. Spafford telegraphed her husband with the message "Saved alone. What shall I do…? " Upon receiving her telegram, Spafford immediately left Chi- cago to bring his wife home. Dur- ing the Atlantic crossing the Cap- tain called Spafford into his cab- in to tell him that they were pass- ing over the spot where his four daughters had drowned. Spafford later wrote to his wife's half-sis- ter Rachel, "On Thursday last we passed over the spot where she went down, in mid-ocean, the wa- ters three miles deep. But I do not think of our dear ones there. They are safe, folded, the dear lambs". Horatio and Anna finally met up Minority View by Walter E. Williams Pursuit of the Cure by Star Parker Educational fraud continues Points to Ponder by Rev. Ford Bond All is well Neutralizing a nuclear-armed North Korea Heritage Viewpoint by Edwin J. Feulner Throughout my latest visit to Northeast Asia, I've met with ma- ny governmental officials, busi- ness leaders, academics and ac- tivists, and seen firsthand that the people of Japan, Taiwan and South Korea are eagerly anticipating the upcoming summits with Kim Jong-un, North Korea's reclusive and dictatorial leader. The head of the "Hermit King- dom" has determined that it's in his national interest to meet with President Trump in late May, fol- lowing a meeting with South Ko- rea's President Moon Jae-in. Why? Simply put, it may bring some re- lief to his starving, bankrupt but nuclear weapon-equipped country. Mr. Kim is really feeling the ef- fects of the harsh economic sanc- tions now being applied, especial- ly with his protector — mainland China — cooperating with their strict enforcement. A call for sum- mit diplomacy is a necessity for Mr. Kim. The question is, how best for Seoul, Washington and Tokyo to proceed? My first piece of advice to ev- eryone involved is to stick togeth- er. Don't let Mr. Kim see any separation between the allies. We've worked too long and too hard, side-by-side, to let this outsider come between us. If we go our separate ways, it will be much easier for him to play us off against each other. My second piece of advice is to demand immediate compliance with our shared objec- tive of the dismantling and remov- al of all nuclear weapons and de- livery systems from North Korea. We should insist that we won't re- lax strict economic sanctions un- til the weapons are out. Our independent inspectors must have unlimited access to proven and to suspected weapons development and storage sites. Never mind promises — they must see the bombs on trucks coming out. These two basic points are es- sential if we are to rid the region and the world of this nuclear bomb-enabled ruler. The intricacies of political think- ing, however, leads me to a third piece of advice: If we in- sist on the first two, he will find it harder to agree. Therefore, we shouldn't get our hopes too high for im- mediate positive action from these summits. So let's keep our expectations reasonable. Dealing with the Kim family dynasty has never been easy for the leaders of free Korea, Japan or the United States. We've all had our share of meetings and agreements signed with great fan- fare, only to have the North's lead- ers tear them up, or at least ignore them, when it suits their conve- nience, or when they've achieved the results they want. 'Happiness Project' Continued on page 12 Continued on page 12 Continued on page 11 Continued on page 11 1968 was a horrific year Lucid Moments by Bart Stinson Horses are big business in Ken- tucky, and even schoolboys were aware of the controversy in Louis- ville 50 years ago. It began with the horse race on the first Saturday in May, so far as we knew. With Kentucky Gov. Louie Nunn and presidential candidate Richard Nixon watching from the stands, Dancer's Image came from dead last, 14 lengths back, to pass 13 horses and cross the wire a length and a half ahead of Forward Pass. Nunn chuckled as Nixon dramati- cally tore his losing ticket in half. But Nixon may have been a lit- tle hasty, depending on which horse he picked. Three days after the race, Churchill Downs stew- ards ordered Boston car dealer Peter Fuller to return the trophy and winning purse, and named Forward Pass the 1968 Kentucky Derby winner. Post race testing revealed that Dancer's Image had phenylbutazone in his blood sam- ple. It's an anti-inflammatory pain- killer, used routinely nowadays when horses suffer swelling in their joints. But in 1968 it was ille- gal at Kentucky racetracks. Full- er's veterinarian prescribed it dur- ing training, but allowed six days for it to clear from the horse's bloodstream before the race. Full- er, his veterinarian and the horse's train- er were at a loss to ex- plain why Dancer's Im- age still had phenylbu- tazone in his system on race day. I was an odd 8th- grader who read Rac- ing Form past performance charts fluently and had committed a lot of racing trivia to memory. But we were also a politically conscious family. My dad ran for the House of Representatives on "Clean Gene" McCarthy's antiwar slate in Ken- tucky's 1st Congressional District. Bobby Kennedy was campaigning for the presidential nomination across the river in Indiana. Martin Luther King was shot down exactly one month before the 1968 Derby, but he was in Lou- isville one year earlier to help lo- cal Blacks, led by his brother, A.D. King, protest housing discrimina- tion. Locals had disrupted a race at Churchill Downs the previous year, and wanted to disrupt the 1967 Der- by, but King persuad- ed them to hold the protests downtown instead, due to the po- tential for mayhem at the track. In April 1968, Fuller entered Dancer's Im- age in a tune-up for the Derby, the Wood Memorial Stakes at Aqueduct Racetrack in New York City. When his horse won, Fuller do- nated the purse to the recently wid- owed Coretta Scott King. I've seen two different numbers - $ 62,000 and $77,415. Either way, it was a lot of money in 1968 dollars. He didn't publicize it, but it was com- mon knowledge at the track, and a race announcer mentioned it on television. The gift made friends and en- emies for Fuller. There was hate mail. There were anonymous death threats. There was a myste- rious fire at one of his stables. So My Point of View by Dr. H. K. Fenol, Jr., M.D. Earlier this month, the 2017 Na- tional Assessment of Educational Progress, aka The Nation's Report Card, was released. It's not a pret- ty story. Only 37 percent of 12th- graders tested proficient or better in reading, and only 25 percent did so in math. Among black students, only 17 percent tested proficient or better in reading, and just 7 percent reached at least a proficient level in math. The atrocious NAEP performance is only a fraction of the bad news. Nationally, our high school gradu- ation rate is over 80 percent. That means high school diplomas, which attest that these students can read and compute at a 12th-grade level, are conferred when 63 percent are not proficient in reading and 75 per- cent are not proficient in math. For blacks, the news is worse. Rough- ly 75 percent of black students re- ceived high school diplomas attest- ing that they could read and com- pute at the 12th-grade level. Howev- er, 83 percent could not read at that level, and 93 percent could not do math at that level. It's grossly dis- honest for the education establish- ment and politicians to boast about unprecedented graduation rates when the high school diplomas, for the most part, do not represent ac- ademic achievement. At best, they certify attendance. Fraudulent high school diplomas aren't the worst part of the fraud. Some of the greatest fraud occurs at the higher education levels — colleg- es and universities. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 70 per- cent of white high school graduates in 2016 enrolled in college, and 58 percent of black high school gradu- ates enrolled in college. Here are my questions to you: If only 37 percent of white high school graduates test as college-ready, how come colleg- es are admitting 70 percent of them? And if roughly 17 percent of black high school graduates test as col- lege-ready, how come colleges are admitting 58 percent of them? It's inconceivable that college ad- ministrators are unaware that they are admitting students who are ill- prepared and cannot perform at the college level. Colleges cope with ill- prepared students in several ways. They provide remedial courses. One study suggests that more than two-thirds of community college students take at least one remedial course, as do 40 percent of four-year college students. College professors dumb down their courses so that ill- prepared students can get passing grades. Colleges also set up majors with little analytical demands so as to accommodate students with an- alytical deficits. Such majors often include the term "studies," such as ethnic studies, cultural studies, gender studies and American stud- ies. The major for the most ill-pre- pared students, sadly enough, is ed- ucation. When students' SAT scores are ranked by intended major, edu- cation majors place 26th on a list of 38 (https://tinyurl.com/pjmga9y). The bottom line is that colleges are admitting youngsters who have not mastered what used to be consid- ered a ninth-grade level of proficien- cy in reading, writing and arithme- tic. Very often, when they graduate from college, they still can't master even a 12th-grade level of academic proficiency. The problem is worse in college sports. During a recent Uni- versity of North Carolina scandal, a learning specialist hired to help ath- letes found that during the period from 2004 to 2012, 60 percent of the 183 members of the football and bas- ketball teams read between fourth- and eighth-grade levels. About 10 percent read below a third-grade level. Keep in mind that all of these athletes both graduated from high school and were admitted to college. How necessary is college any- way? One estimate is that 1 in 3 college graduates have a job his- torically performed by those with a high school diploma. According to Richard Vedder, distinguished emeritus professor of economics at Ohio University and the director of the Center for College A ffordabil- ity and Productivity, in 2012 there were 115,000 janitors, 16,000 park- ing lot attendants, 83,000 bartend- ers and about 35,000 taxi drivers with a bachelor's degree. I'm not sure about what can be done about education. But the first step toward any solution is for the American people to be aware of ac- ademic fraud at every level of edu- cation. Ohio Republican Congressman Jim Jordan has confirmed that he is looking to run for House speak- er when current Speaker Paul Ry- an departs at the end of the year. This puts Jordan up alongside the other principal candidates, current Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., whom Ryan has endorsed as his successor, and Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La. Jordan co-founded the House Freedom Caucus in 2015 with eight other conservative Republi- cans. He explained then that the motivation for founding the caucus was to give "a voice to countless Americans who feel that Wash- ington does not represent them. We support open, accountable and limited government, the Constitu- tion, and the rule of law and poli- cies that promote liberty, safety, and prosperity for all Americans." The caucus now has more than 30 members and has dug in as a unified bloc fighting for exactly those principles that Jordan ar- ticulated at its founding. Most re- cently, the caucus opposed the $1.3 trillion spending bill passed by congress and urged President Trump to veto it. In addition to being a fiscal and constitutional conservative, Jor- dan is also a stalwart pro-life Re- publican and has been on the front lines fighting to defund Planned Parenthood. In other words, he stands for what I call the three C's that have been the pillars of American suc- cess and greatness. Christianity, Capitalism and the Constitution. For this reason, I find the pros- pect of Jordan running for House speaker of great interest. In a recent Fox radio inter- I came across a book called The Happiness Project by Gretchen Ru- bin. That caught my attention. I know all human beings long to be happy. The author had a caption un- derneath the title of the book, It states "Or, Why I Spent a Year Try- ing to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closet, Fight Right, Read Ar- istotle, and Generally Have More Fun." She is also the author of books such as Forty Ways to Look at JFK, Forty Ways to Look at Win- ston Churchill and several other noteworthy books. Her book on this Happiness Proj- ect had plenty of good reviews by many authors of books and news- papers, although I was not too fa- miliar with several of them. Their comments about this book though were quite impressive. The book had 315 pages and took me some- time to read through it at a slow pace. They contained insights about what happiness is about, how she observed different peo- ple have different concepts of hap- piness, how they had achieved a reasonable state of happiness, and what she did to make herself a lit- tle happier. She believes she already was in a rather good level of happiness, but that she felt she could notch up her appreciation of her life at the time she undertook her research and create the book. It became a New York Times #1 Bestseller. The year was in 2009. In her quest to make herself a bit happier than she was already, she made a resolution to do some- thing each month to improve her Continued on page 12 Who is Jim Jordan?