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Wednesday, June 8, 2016 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
O
P
I
N I
O
WELCOME
Rachel
Marsden
SISTERS
RODEO
American Voices
PARTICIPANTS
& PATRONS!
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 Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned.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:
Please give a big Sisters “Hi, Hello
or Howdy” to eight international college
students!
Having lived for 44 years in Central
Oregon we are excited for the opportunity to
welcome eight international college students
to our community through a work and travel
program. We believe there are extraordinary
benefits of cultural exchange both personally
and in our work place.
We were so impressed with each student
during their interview and how eager they are
to experience the American culture. These stu-
dents are from Turkey and China and their ma-
jors include engineering, law, hospitality and
tourism. These are bright young leaders and
we want to introduce them to the American
culture enabling them to develop positive
American experiences that they will take back
with them to their home countries.
The students will be working to help pay
for their travel and living expenses. While
our international students are working in our
restaurant there will not be any impact to our
current staff and how many hours they are
working. We continue to hire individuals from
our community who are willing to work with
passion and who are looking for opportunity.
We believe in investing in our staff. We have
a program called Archways to Opportunity,
which offers free college tuition, high school
completion programs and various management
training programs — all for free! Our teams
take care of us and we take care of them.
These students had a choice where to trav-
el and work for the summer and they chose
to come to Sisters. When you come into our
McDonald’s please introduce yourself and
give them a big Sisters welcome. Say “Hi,”
“Howdy” or “Merhaba” (“Hello” in Turkish)
or “Huan ying” (“Welcome” in Chinese)!
Nanette and Mick Bittler
s
s
s
To the Editor:
This letter is a response to the guest col-
umnist, Carol Lovegren Miller, writing about
See letterS on page 13
Sisters Weather Forecast
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PARIS — Russia is re-
viving its military cadet
program, Yunarmiya, which
will be relaunched across
the country later this year.
The program’s goal is the
“growing of a generation of
citizens who treat the history
with care, who are kind and
responsive, ready to build a
bright future for themselves
and for their country,” ac-
cording to General-colonel
Alexander Kolmakov of the
Russian Army.
Critics promptly slammed
the initiative as proof of
Russian militarization.
They’re missing the point.
Why is anything that
smacks of discipline and
structure viewed negatively?
Why do some people believe
that unless kids are frittering
away their time in an un-
structured manner, they’re
not properly living their
childhood? Kids who grow
up without structure end
up woefully unprepared for
adulthood. Characteristics
such as discipline, indepen-
dence and self-motivation
aren’t simply bestowed upon
people when they reach a
certain age. They’re learned
just like math or history.
But how are kids sup-
posed to acquire these skills
nowadays? In constant com-
petition with distractions
ranging from video games
to reality television to so-
cial media, schoolteachers
are already challenged to
drill the basics into students’
heads during limited class-
room time, and extracur-
ricular activities are increas-
ingly falling victim to budget
cuts. Knowledge alone is
fine, but a lot of book-smart
people fail to reach their
full potential because they
haven’t learned how to apply
themselves.
That’s where the Russian
youth initiative comes in.
Tied to Russia’s defense de-
partment, Yunarmiya teaches
kids skills such as rifle-han-
dling. Naturally, paranoid
Russophobes are having hair-
trigger visions of a Soviet-
style youth army marching in
unison.
The Soviet Union may
have been Marxist, but
these days Russia is lead-
ing the fight against cul-
tural Marxism—the Western
brand of Marxism that has
sabotaged our culture and so-
cial fabric with an excessive
focus on political correctness
and multiculturalism. The
primary symptom of this
societal malady is a lack
of discipline, structure and
standards.
It’s fine, for example, to
welcome new citizens into a
country. But instead of insist-
ing they adopt our values and
culture, we have increasingly
insisted on adopting the val-
ues and cultures of the societ-
ies that these newcomers are
fleeing. By accommodating
every whim, we’re diluting
what we stand for. By stand-
ing for everything, we there-
fore stand for nothing.
There is a pervasive no-
tion in Western democracies
that values and principles
are for fascists who hate
freedom. If you live in a so-
called free country, you’ve
probably been trained to keep
your mouth shut when you
see some kind of extreme so-
cial or cultural weirdness. In
America, some people have
found a champion in pre-
sumptive Republican presi-
dential nominee and 2,000-
pound anti-political correct-
ness gorilla Donald Trump.
I visited Moscow re-
cently, and it reminded me
of my Canadian home-
town (Coquitlam, British
Columbia) in the 1980s:
pleasant, polite, quiet, re-
spectful. Such places are,
sadly, becoming increasingly
rare. I now live in Paris, con-
sidered one of the most liber-
tine cities in the world. It’s a
place where personal, sexual,
cultural and social morals are
all over the map, if they even
exist. Ironically, about the
only thing that’s banned out-
right — and strictly enforced
— is any criticism of non-
French cultural practices.
Shared values are the
white blood cells of a democ-
racy. Without shared values,
cell division spirals out of
control and societal cancers
metastasize.
What if young people in
democratic nations stood
shoulder to shoulder with
their fellow citizens as ca-
dets, learning respect for
their country along with the
principles and standards
necessary for success in
life? “But those kids would
be brainwashed by govern-
ment,” some would say.
Whatever. It beats having
them being brainwashed by
leftists or jihadists.
© 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.