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Wednesday, February 10, 2016 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
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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 Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned.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
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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
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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.