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2 Wednesday, August 23, 2017 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon O P I N I O N Jonah Goldberg Fire updates will be made throughout the week at NuggetNews.com and on Facebook PHOTO BY KELLI CARTER 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 Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned.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: The flags flying on Cascade Avenue August 18 through September 1 were posted by the Sisters Veterans Group (VFW, Am. Legion and Band of Brothers) to show their apprecia- tion and support for law enforcement officers in Central Oregon and across the nation. Coast to coast and border to border, these men and women serve tirelessly day and night to keep our communities safe and our nation secure. Far too many law enforcement person- nel have fallen while on the job these past few years. Every day they risk their lives doing their jobs. Join us in stepping up to support all law enforcement personnel this week and every day thereafter. Wherever you are, try to take the time and make the effort to thank them for their service to us. Art Buell s s s To the Editor: Craig Rullman’s column in The Nugget titled “Charlottesville” (The Nugget, August 15, page 21) is a barely veiled, and completely wrong, claim of moral equivalency of white supremacists and counter protestors, more specifically those of the Black Lives Matter civil rights movement, during the recent dem- onstrations in Charlottesville. According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), in 2015, white supremacists accounted for 38 percent of all extremist killings, fol- lowed by Islamist, anti-government, and anti-abortion extremists. Left-wing extrem- ism accounted for around 1 percent of all killings; so-called “black extremism” did not register. We can accept the belief that black lives matter. We can accept the belief that white lives matter. Each of these statements is true by itself, and stating one by itself does not diminish nor negate the other. It is sad and tell- ing that a group feels the need and compelled to state that their lives matter. Rullman dismisses the media, as he has in the past, parroting Trump’s ridiculous accusa- tions of “fake news,” as biased and mislead- ing, but he says nothing about the media’s See LETTERS on page 24 Sisters Weather Forecast Courtesy of the National Weather Service, Pendleton, Oregon Wednesday Thursday Slt. chance T-storms Sunny 83/50 76/40 Friday Saturday Sunday Monday Sunny Sunny Sunny Sunny 80/44 89/49 90/58 97/58 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. Fighting Nazis is a good thing, but fighting Nazis doesn’t necessarily make you or your cause good. The greatest Nazi-killer of the 20th century was Josef Stalin. He also killed millions of his own people and terror- ized, oppressed, enslaved or brutalized tens of millions more. The fact that he killed Nazis during WWII (out of self-preservation, not prin- ciple) doesn’t dilute his evil. This should settle the issue as far as I’m concerned. Nazism was evil. Soviet com- munism was evil. It’s fine to believe that Nazism was more evil than communism. That doesn’t make commu- nism good. Alas, it doesn’t settle the issue. Confusion on this point poisoned politics in America and abroad for generations. Part of the problem is psy- chological. There’s a natural tendency to think that when people, or movements, hate each other, it must be because they’re opposites. This assumption overlooks the fact that many—indeed, most—of the great conflicts and hatreds in human history are derived from what Sigmund Freud called the “narcissism of minor differences.” Most tribal hatreds are between similar groups. The European wars of religion were between peoples who often shared the same lan- guage and culture, but dif- fered on how to practice the Christian faith. The Sunni- Shia split in the Muslim world is the source of great animos- ity between similar peoples. The young communists and fascists fighting for power in the streets of 1920s Germany had far more in common with each other than they had with decent liberals or conservatives, as we understand those terms today. That’s always true of violent radicals and would-be totalitarians. The second part of the problem wasn’t innocent confusion, but sinister pro- paganda. As Hitler solidified power and effectively out- lawed the Communist Party of Germany, The Commu- nist International (Comin- tern) abandoned its position that socialist and progressive groups that were disloyal to Moscow were “fascist” and instead encouraged com- munists everywhere to build “popular fronts” against the common enemy of Nazism. These alliances of conve- nience with social democrats and other progressives were a great propaganda victory for communists around the world because they bolstered the myth that communists were just members of the left coali- tion in the fight against Hitler, bigotry, fascism, etc. This obscured the fact that whenever the communists had a chance to seize power, they did so. And often, the first people they killed, jailed or exiled were former allies. If you haven’t figured it out yet, this seemingly ancient history is relevant today because of the depress- ingly idiotic argument about whether it’s OK to equate “antifa”— anti-fascist left- wing radicals — with the neo-Nazi and white suprem- acist rabble that recently descended on Charlottesville, Virginia. One of the only nice things about the alt-right is that its leaders are honest about the fact that they want nothing to do with traditional American conservatism. Like the original Nazis, they seek to replace the traditional right with their racial hogwash. The antifa crowd has a very similar agenda with regard to traditional Ameri- can liberalism. These goons and thugs oppose free speech, celebrate violence, despise dissent and have little use for anything else in the Ameri- can political tradition. But many liberals, particularly in the media, are victims of the same kind of confusion that vexed so much of American liberalism in the 20th cen- tury. Because antifa suddenly has the (alt-)right enemies, they must be the good guys. They’re not. And that’s why this debate is so toxically stu- pid. Fine, antifa isn’t as bad as the KKK. Who cares? Since when is being less bad than the Klan a major moral accomplishment? In these tribal times, the impulse to support anyone who shares your enemies is powerful. But it is a morally stunted reflex. This is Amer- ica. You’re free to denounce totalitarians wherever you find them — even if they might hate the right people. © 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.
