The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/998549
The Press-Dispatch Wednesday, June 27, 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 The lack of civil discourse in all branches of the media has allowed political factions to become bom- bastic and shrill to the point that major issues are muddied in emo- tion and political gamesmanship, and solving pressing problems is remote. This gives credence to the me- dia criticism of President Thom- as Jefferson who was derided dur- ing the election of 1796 and 1800 with what he considered salacious lies. He wrote "Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts with- in their knowledge with the lies of the day." The Western World [especial- ly Europe] has been swamped by desperate people wanting to mi- grate to a safer and saner nation with opportunities for life without fear. The reality is, and my apolo- gies to the progressives, the dis- possessed of the world cannot be cared for by the democracies of the world. The resources are not there. Sadly, all the parties involved in decrying or upholding the immi- gration policies of the European Union fail to ask the fundamental question that would reveal the real issue of immigration: "Why are these people leav- ing in mass? " Step back and con- sider what immigrat- ing means. People are leaving their birth country. The familiar is left behind. Family and friends may nev- er be seen again. The immigrant is traveling to a place they do not know about first hand; they only know what they have heard. They may die before they reach the 'Promised Land,' and if they get to the land flowing with milk and honey, they may find it is actually be vinegar and tofu. Without singling out any na- tion, the majorities of these peo- ple who are migrating have no hope and are desperate. Their na- tion is either racked by war, pov- erty, corruption, or a combination of all three. The fact remains that it is not possible for the world's population to shift itself from one location [na- tion] to another in mass. The anti- immigration movement that is ris- ing in Europe is nationalistic in fe- ver because many of these immi- grants are not Christian and have no intention of assim- ilating. What problems will arise in the foresee- able future when two incompatible cultures are forced to coex- ist? The progressives want all to believe that we can join hands and sing songs around a camp fire. That has never happened in the history of the world. It is a fact that historical- ly one group [ethnic or religious] will always dominate. The solution to the mass migra- tion problem is to help nations be- come more self-sufficient and give young people and families hope for the future where they can practice their religion and thrive in their culture. How can this come about when at the current time there are, ac- cording to the Daily Mail, 40 ma- jor conflicts worldwide? The Mail writes, "Many of the conflicts don't get the media or policy attention of the wars in Iraq, Syria, A fghan- istan or Ukraine and they may not have the same geopolitical or eco- nomic importance. But the toll of Lucid Moments By Bart Stinson Pursuit of the Cure by Star Parker Be careful what you wish for Points to Ponder by Rev. Ford Bond Minority View by Walter E. Williams The real issue Blind to real problems America shouldering the load on immigration Continued on page 12 Continued on page 12 My Point of View by Dr. H. K. Fenol, Jr., M.D. I graduated from the Military Police school in northern Alabama a little over 40 years ago and board- ed a flight for the Panama Canal Zone to do justice with unyielding integrity and stand up, fearlessly, to bad guys of every description. But when I arrived, experienced MPs cautioned me not to agonize three types of people in the Army: the company clerk, because he could foul up your pay. The medic, because he could lose your shot re- cords. And the cook because, well, you know. So I am acutely alert for any sig- nals that I am unwelcome or resent- ed in a restaurant. I may overstay my welcome at a relative's house, but not at a restaurant staffed by strangers with access to food that will go in my mouth. I can understand why White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders quickly retreat- ed from a Lexington, Virginia res- taurant after the owner told her to leave, even after they had seated her and taken her order. There's just too much disgusting stuff they can do to your food by accident, much less on purpose. You may recall that Jesse Jack- son reported that he spat in white people's food when he was a teen- age restaurant employee. I would much rather be refused service than for some Democrat or future Democrat to spit in my food. However, jurisprudence is well developed regarding refusal of service, and very sparse regard- ing spit in the food, due to the well documented evidence of the for- mer, and the general invisibility of the latter. Sodomites (gays and gay al- lies) recently tried to destroy a small business in Colorado after the owner declined to customize a wedding cake for a same-sex wed- ding. Unlike Mrs. Sanders, the gay couple wasn't refused service out- right. In fact, they were old cus- tomers, well known to the bak- er. The bakery was willing to sell them any product off the shelf, in- cluding a generic birthday cake. But the baker wasn't willing to customize a wedding cake that would celebrate same-sex mar- riage, due to sincerely held re- ligious convictions. This con- stituted religious bigotry in the Sodomite precincts of Colorado. Mind you, no LGBTQ baker was required to provide cakes with an- ti-gay themes or messages. The authorities in Colorado imposed "tolerance" on religious people, on decent people, but not on sexu- ally depraved people. One Colorado Civil Rights Com- missioner declared that the Chris- tian baker had "no right to act on his religious beliefs if he wants to do business in this state. When the baker stated his religious objec- tions to participating in the same- sex celebration, another Commis- sioner called them "despicable pieces of rhetoric." This was too much even for half the liberal Justices on the U.S. Su- preme Court. In a 7-2 decision, the Court overturned the Colora- do penalties. Liberals were dismayed by the decision, and when the Lexington owner drove Mrs. Sanders and her guests out of that restaurant, many took to Facebook to accuse conser- vatives of hyprocrisy for objecting to that. It was identical to the Col- orado baker's case, they claimed. But as Princeton professor Rob- ert George has pointed out, the two incidents would not be analo- gous unless Mrs. Sanders had re- quested the restaurant to "create custom food items for a celebration (perhaps at her church) of the Ze- ro Tolerance policy," to which the restaurant owner objected. Even then, to directly com- pare the two cases, the restau- rant owner would have had to be willing to serve Mrs. Sanders off- the-shelf food items to be "[used] for any event she likes," and will- ing to "provide custom-designed food items for her for birthday par- ties, holiday celebrations and oth- er events" to which the owner had no moral objection. These two events were not even remotely analogous. Other than superficial similarities as to food In 2014, high-tech executive and CEO of Mozilla Brendan Eich was forced to resign from the compa- ny he helped found and build, be- cause he made a $1,000 contribu- tion to support traditional mar- riage in the California marriage referendum. According to accounts, Eich was subject to vicious attacks through social media for his contribution in the marriage campaign. Mozilla chairwoman, Mitchell Baker, observed, "Mozilla believes in both equality and freedom of speech. Equality is necessary for meaningful speech. And you need free speech to fight for equality. Figuring out how to stand for both at the same time can be hard." That Mozilla's chairwoman could offer such a confused, vacu- ous explanation for Eich's dismiss- al sheds light on why the overall state of affairs in the country is such a mess. Free speech is not about equali- ty. Free speech is about the pursuit of truth. The equality necessary for free speech is equality under the law, where everyone receives equal protection. But when politics is the aim rather than truth, objec- tive law protecting free expression gets flushed, and political opera- tives, like Baker, determine who lives and who dies. Two years earlier, Crystal Dix- on, a black Christian woman, was fired from her human resources position at the University of To- ledo because she penned an op- ed for the local newspaper chal- I've been watching and listening closely to the news about the cur- rent immigration crises our coun- try has been experiencing. If one listens long enough to these on- going news, I'm sure many of us feel the same way—there is a roll- er coaster of emotions we all go through as we are bombarded by opinions from different sources. On one hand we citizens of this country feel very strongly that the rule of law must prevail. If you study the history of countries who live in relative prosperity and peace, law and order exist which are very strongly in place and en- forced. If you study countries suffering from poverty and misery, law and order appear not to exist. On the other hand we also are aware we have to have compassion and care for those who seek refuge in our country. So how do you balance these two forces? It is so compli- cated and so hard to do. ******* There are many opinions what to do about this matter. In my sim- ple way of thinking, I have written letters to our lawmakers offering suggestions. One of them is to have our government reach out to the leaders of the countries where ref- ugees come from. Would it make sense to ask them to have a con- ference or a meeting ( like the G 7 meetings) to ask their opinion Continued on page 12 Continued on page 12 Continued on page 12 Continued on page 12 Do Christians have a future in LGBTQ America? For several decades, a few black scholars have been suggesting that the vision held by many black Americans is entirely wrong. Dr. Shelby Steele, a scholar at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, said: "Instead of admitting that racism has declined, we (blacks) argue all the harder that it is still alive and more insidious than ever. We hold race up to shield us from what we do not want to see in our- selves." Dr. John McWhorter, professor of English and comparative liter- ature at Columbia University, la- mented that "victimology, sepa- ratism, and anti-intellectualism underlie the general black commu- nity's response to all race-related issues," adding that "these three thought patterns impede black ad- vancement much more than rac- ism; and dysfunctional inner cit- ies, corporate glass ceilings, and black educational underachieve- ment will persist until such think- ing disappears." In the 1990s, Harvard professor Orlando Patterson wrote, "Amer- ica, while still flawed in its race relations ... is now the least rac- ist white-majority society in the world; has a better re- cord of legal protection of minorities than any other society, white or black; (and) offers more opportunities to a greater number of black persons than any other society, in- cluding all those of A f- rica." During an interview in December with The Daily Call- er, Steele said the anti-American- ism that started during the 1960s and has become mainstream and visible in the black community is "heartbreaking and sad." That an- ti-Americanism that so dominates the American black identity has been "ruinous to black America, where we are worse off than we were under segregation by almost every socio-economic measure." Some people might challenge Steele's assertion that in many measures blacks are worse off than during segregation. How about some numbers? As late as 1950, fe- male-headed households were on- ly 18 percent of the black popula- tion. Today 70 percent of black children are raised in single-par- ent households. In the late 1800s, there were only slight differenc- es between the black family structure and those of other ethnic groups. In New York City in 1925, for ex- ample, 85 percent of kin-related black households were two-parent households. According to the 1938 Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, that year 11 per- cent of black children were born to unwed mothers. Today about 75 percent of black children are born to unwed mothers. From 1890 to 1940, a slightly higher percentage of black adults had married than white adults. Today about twice as many blacks have never married as whites. The bottom line is that the black family was stronger the first 100 years after slavery than during ! Stopping 'war games' is a costly mistake Heritage Viewpoint by Edwin J. Feulner I arrived in Seoul on the same day as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo after the Singapore sum- mit. In the wake of the meeting be- tween President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, Mr. Pompeo and I had essentially the same task: Reassuring our allies. Of course, he did it with high- level government officials, and I did it unofficially with many con- tacts who are journalists, business leaders and academics. But they all had at least one thing in com- mon: Concerns about Mr. Trump's announcement that we'd be stop- ping "war games" in the region. Although he didn't expressly say so, this is an apparent refer- ence to the joint military exercis- es that we regularly conduct with South Korean military forces. Some of these "war games" are quite large, such as the Ulchi Fo- cus Guardian, which takes place in the fall and involves around 20,000 U.S. personnel, while others are field training exercis- es by a U.S. battalion or squadron. Pyongyang, of course, hates these ex- ercises, and has regu- larly called for them to be halted. North Kore- an officials often make this request a condi- tion of stopping nucle- ar tests, as they did as recently as 2015. In January of that year, they called on the U.S. to ease tensions on the peninsula by "temporarily suspending joint military exercis- es in and around South Korea this year, and [in return] the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] is ready to temporarily sus- pend the nuclear test over which the U.S. is concerned." So we've been down this road be- fore. We said no in 2015. We should say no now. For one thing, the exercises are neces- sary if we're to con- tinue honoring our long-standing com- mitment to our South Korean allies. They "ensure that U.S. and South Korean forc- es, as well as select allied forces who are part of the United Nations Com- mand, are able to work seamless- ly together to defend South Ko- rea from attack," writes Thomas Spoehr, a former Pentagon official with more than 36 years of U.S. Ar- my experience. North Korean officials, in their usual blustery, bellicose fashion, refer to these exercises as "dress