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About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (June 21, 2017)
2 Wednesday, June 21, 2017 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon O P I N I O N Jonah Goldberg 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 Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned.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: My husband, Michael Hooey, was seri- ously injured in a motorcycle accident May 28 on Indian Ford Road in Sisters. He fractured both his femurs — one compound — fractured his neck and pelvis, and required 10 units of blood. It is because of the first responders’ quick arrival and their split-second decisions, as well as the work of the trauma team at St. Charles Medical Center, that saved his life that morning. My husband, and our family, would like to thank all of you. You will always be in our thoughts and prayers. Our community is truly blessed to have that level of emergency care here when needed. As we continue to piece together the events of that morning, we ask if anyone saw or heard anything relating to the accident would you please contact us via email at deehooey@ yahoo.com. Dee Hooey s s s To the Editor: Last night I attended the Sisters Dance Academy Spring dance recital. It was amaz- ing. The choreography was creative and really showed off their talent. The cos- tumes were so creative and colorful. I went to see high school students, but was treated to age 4 on up. Lonnie Liddell and the rest of the staff did a fine job. I highly rec- ommend going to her next recital. I know See LETTERS on page 14 Sisters Weather Forecast Courtesy of the National Weather Service, Pendleton, Oregon Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday Sunny Sunny Sunny Sunny Sunny Sunny 80/40 76/41 79/44 83/47 87/49 85/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 Easterling 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. ©2017 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. There’s a tension so deep in how we think about free expression, it should rightly be called a paradox. On the one hand, regard- less of ideology, artists and writers almost unanimously insist that they do what they do to change minds. But the same artistes, auteurs and opiners recoil in horror when anyone suggests that they might be responsible for inspiring bad deeds. Hollywood, the music industry, journalism, politi- cal ideologies, even the Confederate flag: Each takes its turn in the dock when some madman or fool does something terrible. Hollywood activists blame the toxic rhetoric of right-wing talk radio or the tea party for this crime, the National Rifle Association blames Hollywood for that atrocity. Liberals decry the toxic rhetoric of the right, conservatives blame the toxic rhetoric of the left. When attacked — heed- less of ideology or con- sistency — the gladiators instantly trade weapons. The finger-pointers of five minutes ago suddenly wax righteous in their indigna- tion that mere expression — rather, their expres- sion — should be blamed. Many of the same liber- als who pounded soap- boxes into pulp at the very thought of labeling record albums with violent-lyrics warnings instantly insisted that Sarah Palin had Rep. Gabby Giffords’ blood on her hands. Many of the con- servatives who spewed hot fire at the suggestion that they had any culpability in an abortion clinic bombing, gleefully insisted that Sen. Bernie Sanders is partially to blame for Rep. Steve Scalise’s fight with death. And this is where the paradox starts to come into view: Everyone has a point. “The blame for violent acts lies with the people who commit them, and with those who explicitly and seriously call for vio- lence,” Dan McLaughlin, my National Review col- league, wrote in the Los Angeles Times last week. “People who just use over- heated political rhetoric, or who happen to share the gunman’s opinions, should be nowhere on the list.” As a matter of law, I agree with this entirely. But as a matter of culture, it’s more complicated. I have always thought it absurd to claim that expression cannot lead people to do bad things, precisely because it is so obvious that expression can lead people to do good things. According to leg- end, Abraham Lincoln told Harriet Beecher Stowe, “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.” Should we mock Lincoln for saying something ridiculous? As Irving Kristol once put it, “If you believe that no one was ever corrupted by a book, you have also to believe that no one was ever improved by a book. You have to believe, in other words, that art is morally trivial and that education is morally irrelevant.” Ironically, free speech was born in an attempt to stop killing. It has its roots in freedom of con- science. Before the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the common practice was that the rulers’ religion deter- mined their subjects’ faith too. Religious dissent was not only heresy but a kind of treason. After Westphalia, exhaustion with religion- motivated bloodshed created space for toleration. As the historian C.V. Wedgwood put it, the West had begun to understand “the essential futility of putting the beliefs of the mind to the judgment of the sword.” This didn’t mean that Protestants instantly stopped hating Catholics or vice versa. Nor did it mean that the more ecumenical hatred of Jews vanished. What it did mean is that it was no longer acceptable to kill people simply for what they believed — or said. But words still mattered. Art still moved people. And the law is not the full and final measure of morality. Hence the paradox: In a free society, people have a moral responsibility for what they say, while at the same time a free society requires legal responsibility only for what they actually do. © 2017 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.