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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 Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned.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
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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.