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Wednesday, January 24, 2018 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
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Jonah
Goldberg
Letters to the Editor…
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ters to the Editor is an open forum for the community and contains unsolicited opinions not necessarily shared by the Editor.
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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
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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?
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Opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer and
are not necessarily shared by the Editor or The Nugget Newspaper.