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About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 26, 2018)
2 Wednesday, September 26, 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 Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned.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: My wife and I have been attending the Folk Festival for 15 years. In that time we have become Sisters fans. We have told many friends and relatives of the welcoming and friendly nature of your community. I am writ- ing this letter, not in a way to complain, but in a way to let you know that this year we could feel an underlying change. From the outside looking in, it felt as though there may be two factions developing. It seems as if there may be a group who would prefer to close the doors to outsiders. My anal- ogy would be that of two parents bickering. They think the children, (visitors,) don’t feel the tension. But we can and did. I’m not writing to support one side or the other. You as a community need to set your own direction. I simply want you to know that, for the first time in fifteen years, we had experiences that left us wondering if we were welcome. As a 50-year resident of Oregon, I have experienced a lot of growth. It can be difficult. It appears to me, the communities in which the residents support the events and retailers are far more successful. However, as I said, it’s up to you as a community. I think there are two choices. Reduce festivities and retail growth, or support them. John Doran s s s To the Editor: The numbers coming out in the news recently about how many immigrant children are being taken from their parents and put into detention in this, the United States of America, are both alarming and appalling. It’s not just the numbers; not ONE child should be taken. What have we become in yet again our darkest hour? This is not about border control, this is about humanity, and if we allow this to continue it will define us as a country and a people in the harsh eyes of history. We all know how sweet and shy and unsure and vulnerable children can be in their See LETTERS on page 28 Sisters Weather Forecast Courtesy of the National Weather Service, Pendleton, Oregon Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday Sunny Sunny Mostly Sunny Mostly Sunny AM Showers Mostly Cloudy 84/48 88/45 78/44 75/42 68/42 65/42 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 Postmaster: Send address changes to The Nugget Newspaper, P.O. Box 698, Sisters, OR 97759. Third Class Postage Paid at Sisters, Oregon. Editor in Chief: Jim Cornelius Production Manager: Leith Easterling Graphic Design: Jess Draper Community Marketing Partners: Patti Jo Beal & Vicki Curlett Classifieds & Circulation: Lisa May 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. D o n a l d Tr u m p h a s received an enormous amount of criticism for the damage he’s done to con- stitutional and democratic norms. I have been among those critics at times. But few of his transgressions can hold a candle to the mob assault on many of those norms in recent days. Over and over, elected officials and leading com- m e n t a t o r s a l i k e h a v e insisted Christine Blasey Ford’s allegation that Kavanaugh attempted to drunkenly rape her must be true because other men have done such things. “But really,” said Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), “guess who is perpetuating all of these kinds of actions? It’s the men in this country. And I just want to say to the men in this country: Just shut up and step up, do the right thing for a change.” Substitute “blacks” for “men” and this demagogu- ery is instantly recognizable as bigotry. One of the greatest rev- olutionary ideas in all of human history is the classi- cally liberal notion that there is no such thing as group rights. For thousands of years, aristocrats had more rights than peasants. When America was founded, whites had more rights than blacks, men had more rights than women, and rich white men had more rights than everybody else. This wasn’t always true on paper, but it was overwhelmingly true in the real world. America has worked — as a matter of law, politics and moral education — to live up to our ideals of indi- vidual rights, and we’ve made enormous progress. These last few days have not only proved how much more work is left to be done, but how easily we can go in the wrong direction when partisan fury drives our politics. Just as there are no col- lective rights, there is also no such thing as collective guilt. It is of course true that most rapes are committed by men, but that doesn’t mean most men are rapists. Nor does it mean that because some other men committed rape, a man who didn’t is guilty or loses the pre- sumption of innocence. If you cannot understand this bedrock democratic norm, I invite you to review ter- rorism debates over the last two decades. Just because all jihadi terrorists are Muslims, not all Muslims are jihadi terrorists. The same basic insight applies to every subcate- gory of men — white men, black men, privileged men, conservative men, etc. And yet Hirono is not alone in giving voice to this glib and wholesale slander. It’s everywhere. Over and over, opponents of Kavanaugh are arguing that Ford is credible because of the actions of other men. That argument is fine as far as it goes, but it does not go very far. Credible means “believable.” It does not mean “true.” And yet the argument made a thousand times a day on cable news and social media is that because the charge is (alleg- edly) believable, it must also be believed. And while as a man, I do take offense at the presump- tion of guilt, my true objec- tion has nothing to do with “male pride,” since I find the concept fairly ridicu- lous. The real problem is that these arguments set a torch to many of the best ideals of this country. Individuals have a right to confront their accuser. They have a right to defend themselves. Accusers have a right to be heard. They do not have a right to be believed absent evidence or to make anonymous charges and then refuse to support them. Partisans can- not prove an individual’s guilt by invoking the real or alleged crimes of others. Nor should they insist that even if he’s innocent, he should let himself be bul- lied into surrender for the greater good. That is not the rule of law; it’s not even decency. It’s the rule of the mob, and the fact that it is coming from prominent journalists and senators doesn’t make it any less repugnant. © 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.