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About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 10, 2016)
2 Wednesday, February 10, 2016 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon O P I N I O N Rachel Marsden American Voices Letters to the Editor… The Nugget welcomes contributions from its readers, which must include the writer’s name, address and phone number. Let- ters to the Editor is an open forum for the community and contains unsolicited opinions not necessarily shared by the Editor. The Nugget reserves the right to edit, omit, respond or ask for a response to letters submitted to the Editor. Letters should be no longer than 300 words. Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned. The deadline for all letters is noon Monday. To the Editor: “I know it when I see it.” In 1964, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart quoted this often-used colloquial expression as a test for obscenity in Jacobellis v. Ohio. Anyone, whether military or civilian that has worked with classified information as a central part of their job and sees that same information, whether on an unmarked email or a napkin “know classified when they see it”! Hillary Clinton’s latest what-difference- does-it-make excuse claiming her emails weren’t marked as classified sets an all-time record for political equivocation. As more information validates her emails in fact contained information sensitive to our national security, on an unsecured server, I think it’s pretty safe Hillary “knew it when she saw it.” As a potential Commander in Chief, Hillary Clinton’s apparent lackadaisical atti- tude on such a serious issue is unconscionable. Jeff Mackey s s s To the Editor: Wanted to share something with our com- munity that happened this past week. I was approaching the doors at one of our local businesses (I think it was our post office) and noticed a young boy arriving at the same time as me. We were both going to arrive at the doors at the exact same time. Much to my sur- prise, he hurried up to beat me to the door and opened it for me! Wow, I was very touched by the manners and respect that this youth had for his elders. It touched me deeply and confirmed that manners and respect are not totally gone in our youth. His kindness and thoughtfulness impacted me in a great way. Wish I could personally thank him… Bruce Merrell s s s To the Editor: This Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, the 40-day period before Easter, when many Christians abstain from animal foods in remembrance of Jesus’ 40 days of fasting in the desert before launching his ministry. But meat-free Lent is much more than a symbol of religious devotion to Christ. It helps reduce the risk of chronic disease, environmen- tal degradation, and animal abuse. Dozens of medical reports have linked consumption of animal products with elevated risk of heart failure, stroke, cancer, and other killer diseases. A 2007 U.N. report named meat production See LetteRS on page 28 Sisters Weather Forecast Courtesy of the National Weather Service, Pendleton, Oregon Wednesday thursday Friday Saturday Sunday monday Mostly sunny Mostly cloudy Chance rain Mostly cloudy Chance rain Mostly cloudy 57/34 54/33 57/31 50/29 54/35 55/na The Nugget Newspaper, Inc. Website: www.nuggetnews.com 442 E. Main Ave., P.O. Box 698, Sisters, Oregon 97759 Tel: 541-549-9941 | Fax: 541-549-9940 | editor@nuggetnews.com Postmaster: Send address changes to The Nugget Newspaper, P.O. Box 698, Sisters, OR 97759. Third Class Postage Paid at Sisters, Oregon. Publisher - Editor: Kiki Dolson News Editor: Jim Cornelius Production Manager: Leith Williver Classifieds & Circulation: Teresa Mahnken Advertising: Karen Kassy Graphic Design: Jess Draper Proofreader: Pete Rathbun Accounting: Erin Bordonaro The Nugget is mailed to residents within the Sisters School District; subscriptions are available outside delivery area. Third-class postage: one year, $45; six months (or less), $25. First-class postage: one year, $85; six months, $55. Published Weekly. ©2016 The Nugget Newspaper, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. All advertising which appears in The Nugget is the property of The Nugget and may not be used without explicit permission. The Nugget Newspaper, Inc. assumes no liability or responsibility for information contained in advertisements, articles, stories, lists, calendar etc. within this publication. All submissions to The Nugget Newspaper will be treated as uncondition- ally assigned for publication and copyrighting purposes and subject to The Nugget Newspaper’s unrestricted right to edit and comment editorially, that all rights are currently available, and that the material in no way infringes upon the rights of any person. The publisher assumes no responsibility for return or safety of artwork, photos, or manuscripts. PARIS — Despite liv- ing in an increasingly dis- enchanted world, we seem to be in the grips of a global epidemic of naivety. People are far too easily seduced by exalted words and fine senti- ments, and the result is a lot of severely dysfunctional relationships. No, this is not a column about dating—it’s about electoral politics—although the dynamics are exactly the same. People often seek to align their votes with their ideals—and end up getting bamboozled. Before they know it, they’re actually enabling even more dumb choices by those who suck- ered them in the first place. It’s political Stockholm syndrome. If you were dating some- one for a week and that per- son proclaimed you to be the love of his or her life and promised you the world, would you believe it? Only someone desperate or gullible would, right? A more rational approach is to test a relation- ship over time, to approach ardor and wild promises with healthy skepticism. So then why are people so easily hoodwinked by politi- cians who talk this way? I’m really not sure how else to explain the popularity, in the wake of the Iowa primaries, of candidates like Sens. Ber- nie Sanders or Ted Cruz. If Sanders, a Democrat who avows being a demo- cratic socialist, showed up in Russia and asked to join President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party, I suspect that he’d be reminded that the Soviet Union already tried his brand of thinking and it didn’t work out very well. A lifelong professional activist, Sanders has a lot of free stuff built into his platform. I see a lot of spending and not much in the way of plans to create more wealth to pay for it all. Meanwhile, Cruz, a Republican, says that he wants to “restore leadership on the global stage” while he simultaneously badmouths Putin — who is now doing the heavy lifting against the Islamic State in Syria — as a “KGB thug.” In Europe, the focus on rhetoric over pragma- tism has led to security and demographic problems so severe that urgent action is needed to even make a dent in resolving them. But if you think Europe’s political class has since awoken, you’d be wrong. Germany and other Euro- pean countries have been flooded by refugees and by opportunists posing as such — to the point where elected officials and intel- ligence services have now outright admitted that Islamic State fighters have exploited Europe’s open door to smug- gle in terrorist sleeper cells. And we’ve already wit- nessed widespread reports of migrants attacking Euro- pean women and committing crimes. For months, no one dared credit the common-sense warnings that these problems could arise if refugees were admitted in great numbers. The nice words and thoughts related to the humanitar- ian aspect of the migrant phenomenon somehow pre- vented a whole lot of people from being able to foresee the darker repercussions. According to the Finan- cial Times, the European Commission is actually considering scrapping the requirement that asylum applications be limited to the first country of refuge. This is another case in which poli- ticians fail to foresee how the migrant problem could be further spread throughout Europe like a metastasized cancer. Meanwhile, despite hav- ing at least reinstated its bor- ders, France is now trying to contend with an internal enemy. It is debating ridicu- lous propositions like strip- ping terrorists of citizenship. To be punished in this way, the terrorists must first be dual nationals, and then they must be convicted of terror- ism — which is hard to do after they’ve blown them- selves up. When citizens satisfy themselves with high-minded but empty rhetoric, and elected officials echo these vaunted ideals to silence dis- senting voices, nations will find themselves locked in a death spiral. If the rest of us don’t more aggressively point this problem out, we may very well go down with them. © 2016 Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer and are not necessarily shared by the Editor or The Nugget Newspaper.
