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About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 24, 2018)
2 Wednesday, January 24, 2018 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 Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned.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: Last summer I wrote (a letter) published in The Nugget comparing the erratic and schizo- phrenic behavior of sage rats to the main- stream media. Given the volume of fake news and vitriol spewed by the press since then, I feel the need to make a sincere apology to the sage rats for making that association. At the White House press conference last week regarding the President’s recent physi- cal exam I was encouraged however as one hard-hitting reporter demonstrated new hope for journalistic integrity. She was about to blow the Russian collusion story wide open. You could hear a pin drop in the tension-filled moment when she asked “does the President wear dentures?” Jeff Mackey s s To the Editor: Why should Sisters make marijuana use easier? Is this the kind of community we want? I’ve already encountered people smoking marijuana outside the library, at the public parks, and on the job. I don’t want to see any of our kids here in Sisters thinking that this is OK or normal. Marijuana has drastic side affects we all know about. The biggest ones effect memory, brain development, and feel- ings of apathy. In a world where people are already losing touch with reality do we really want more of this? There are many ways to chill out, man- age pain, and deal with a whole host of other things people use marijuana for. We have many great restaurants and cafes for relaxing, we have many hiking trails for clearing the s See LETTERS on page 14 Sisters Weather Forecast Courtesy of the National Weather Service, Pendleton, Oregon Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Monday Sunday Rain/Snow Chance Snow Chance Snow Rain/Snow Likely Chance Rain Slt. Chance Rain 41/23 37/24 35/27 41/31 44/31 43/31 The Nugget Newspaper, LLC 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 Editor In Chief: Jim Cornelius Production Manager: Leith Easterling Classifieds & Circulation: Teresa Mahnken Graphic Design: Jess Draper Postmaster: Send address changes to The Nugget Newspaper, P.O. Box 698, Sisters, OR 97759. Third Class Postage Paid at Sisters, Oregon. Accounting: Erin Bordonaro Proofreader: Pete Rathbun Owner: J. Louis Mullen 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. ©2018 The Nugget Newspaper, LLC. 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. Sen. Lindsey Graham says he scolded the president for saying something scato- logical about certain coun- tries and their emigrants. “Diversity has always been our strength,” Graham alleg- edly said. By my very rough count, this makes Graham the bazillionth person to proclaim some variant of “diversity is strength.” But is it true? I think the only close to right answer is, “It depends.” Diverse stock portfolios are more resilient. Diverse diets are healthier. But that doesn’t mean pick- ing bad stocks will make you richer, nor that eating spoiled foods is good for you. I once heard the Rev. Jesse Jackson explain that racial integration of the NBA made it stronger and better. He was right. But would gender integration of the NBA have the same effect? Would diversifying professional basketball by height? Probably not. In other words, all of these analogies can only take you so far. Thomas Sowell once said, “The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department.” There’s a growing body of evidence that even if diversity once made America stronger, it may not be doing so anymore, at least in the short and medium term. Robert Putnam, a lib- eral sociologist at Harvard, found that increased diver- sity corrodes civil society by eroding shared values, cus- toms and institutions. I think the real culprit here isn’t immigration or diversity in general, but the rising stigma against assimi- lation. Anyone of any race or national origin can be an American, but it requires effort and desire from both the individual and the larger society. There’s a shortage of both these days. But while traditional notions of assimilation are increasingly heretical, there is a kind of anti-assimila- tion assimilation move- ment afoot. It insists that we must “celebrate our dif- ferences” and make them the essence of our identity. The University of California officially considers terms like “melting pot” offensive and “triggering.” But no one would confuse the UC sys- tem as a hotbed of free and independent thought. What is expected is assimilation into an ideological world- view all its own, one that simply asserts without proof that one kind of diversity makes us stronger. So far, all of this should be familiar. Liberals, broadly speaking, assert that diversity makes us stron- ger. Conservatives, broadly speaking, respond with skepticism or emphasize a different kind of diversity. What gets less attention, however, is the premise that “strength” is an indisputably overriding priority or ideal. Strength has always struck me as a strange ideal for a democracy. Strength, like other fetishized ideals such as “unity,” is wholly amoral. Even “diversity makes us richer” has more moral content than “diversity makes us stronger.” Stronger to do what, exactly? This has been one of my core objections to Donald Trump’s rhetoric. He con- stantly extols strength, at home and abroad. He praised the Chinese govern- ment for showing strength at Tiananmen Square. He admires Vladimir Putin’s strong leadership. On the campaign trail, he upended the traditional conservative critique of big government by decrying the “weakness” of America’s political lead- ers and institutions. If you read the Federalist Papers, you’ll learn that among the top priorities of the founders was to ensure that the government, par- ticularly any branch of gov- ernment, not be too pow- erful. The Bill of Rights is all about constraining the power of government. The Constitution never once mentions the words “strength” or “strong.” Neither does the Declaration of Independence. But both documents include a great deal about freedom and liberty. Of course, I don’t want America to be weaker, depending on how you define weakness. But maybe the overriding problem with the debate, on both sides, is the assumption that strength is its own reward? © 2018 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.