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Wednesday, December 26, 2018 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
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EARLY HOLIDAY DEADLINES FOR THE NUGGET
The Nugget will be closed
on Tuesday, January 1.
Early deadline for display advertising and the
events calendar for the issue of January 2 is
Thursday, December 27 at 5 p.m.
Deadline for classified advertising, announcements,
letters to the editor and press releases for the issue of
January 2 is Friday, December 28 at 12 p.m.
Happy New Year!
Sisters is poised for change
Soon, the art installation will be in place
in the Barclay Roundabout, completing the
westwork of the grand cathedral that is Central
Oregon. And the pilgrims will come in their
thousands, as they always do. A great propor-
tion of this host will long to make this place
their home — just as almost all of us did at some
point along our life’s trail. Some will find a way.
Sisters will grow. Sisters will change.
It’s always tempting to try to throw up a
bulwark to resist change, especially when we
feel that what we love is at stake. But change
is water — it seeps around, under and through
any barrier. It finds a way.
So… Sisters will grow. Sisters will change.
Laird Superfood has announced a major
expansion. Hayden Homes plans to build
nearly 200 new dwellings at McKenzie
Meadows. New commercial developments are
in the wind.
Growth and change mean prosperity. New
jobs, more school enrollment, a more diverse
and therefore more robust economy. It also
has negative impact: More traffic and conges-
tion — and the potential to lose the small-town
charm that attracted so many in the first place.
When my wife and I moved to Sisters in
1993, there were fewer than 800 people living
inside the city limits. For years, it was actually
possible to know just about everybody in town,
at least to say howdy. When a population grows
to several thousand, that’s just not possible
anymore.
It’s harder to hit the woods and find soli-
tude away from the crowd. Conflicts of values
and uses — from activities in the forest to live
music downtown — get more frequent and
more acute.
So, then, is it possible to reap the rewards of
growth without losing our character, our soul?
We’re about to find out. 2019 is likely to be a
watershed year for Sisters as it tries to navigate
into a new era in its history.
There’s reason to be optimistic. Sisters
is still a community that leaps up to fill the
shelves of the food bank or an auditorium for
a community display of talent. It’s still a place
where people hold the door for each other at the
post office. Even as we move into the new year,
there’s a whole lot of people who are working
hard to figure out how Sisters can venture into
the future and still stay Sisters.
Just knowing that this is going to take some
mindful effort is an important step. And maybe
it just comes down to being neighborly.
So, neighbors — here’s wishing you all a
happy new year.
Jim Cornelius, Editor in Chief
See Letters to the Editor on page 15.
Sisters Weather Forecast
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Wednesday
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The Nugget Newspaper, LLC
Website: www.nuggetnews.com
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N
Jonah
Goldberg
America is often described
as a constitutional democracy
or constitutional republic.
That’s not really true. The
best you could say is that our
system is constitutional-ish.
Consider the bizarre
controversy over President
Donald Trump’s decision to
pull out of Syria. As a mat-
ter of policy, I think it’s a ter-
rible decision he will live to
regret. Nearly every foreign
policy expert feels the same
way, including — if reports
are true — military leader-
ship and the president’s own
National Security Council.
Outside of a few negli-
gible but reliable boosters
such as perennially dov-
ish Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.),
everyone thinks this amounts
to a reprieve for ISIS and
a betrayal of the Kurds,
who’ve done much of the
heavy fighting for us. Of
course, the Iranian mullahs,
Russian dictator Vladimir
Putin, Turkish president for
life Recep Tayyip Erdogan
and Syrian butcher Bashar
al-Assad are all gleeful.
But as unfathomable as
the president’s policy deci-
sion may be, the constitu-
tional context in which he
made it is far weirder.
On both sides of the aisle,
congressional leaders are
denouncing the president’s
decision, largely for the rea-
sons stated above. But take
a step back and consider the
fact that all of these outraged
senators and congressmen
are furious about the presi-
dent retreating from a war
they did not authorize.
The Constitution is very
clear: Congress — and only
Congress — has the power
to declare war. It hasn’t for-
mally declared war since
World War II (1942, to be
exact, when it declared war
on German-allied Bulgaria,
Hungary and Romania).
Since then, it has some-
times used phrases like the
“authorization of military
force,” and other times presi-
dents have acted unilaterally,
invoking U.N. resolutions or
really almost nothing at all.
To the extent that Congress
has complained, the outrage
has usually been partisan.
The so-called war on ter-
ror, well into its 18th year, is
a sprawling enterprise around
the globe (one I largely sup-
port as a matter of policy),
tenuously justified by con-
stitutionally flimsy pro-
nouncements by Congress.
The Authorization for Use
of Military Force Against
Terrorists passed after 9/11
doesn’t cover ISIS in Syria
(or Africa, or the Philippines,
or cyberspace).
The president basically
has carte blanche to wage
war — and retreat from it
— without any real congres-
sional sanction. President
Obama invaded Syria with-
out congressional autho-
rization. President Trump
ramped up that war without
congressional authorization.
And now he wants to pull
out without congressional
authorization.
War is just the most grave
and appalling example of
bipartisan congressional
cowardice. Congress gave
the president almost uni-
lateral authority over trade
decades ago, even though
the Commerce Clause gives
Congress total authority
over trade, both foreign and
domestic.
Congress has been sur-
rendering vast swaths of its
constitutional authority to the
president, to the courts and to
a permanent bureaucracy for
a century.
The Founders never imag-
ined that Congress would
just give away so much of
its power. James Madison
wrote in Federalist No. 48
that Congress would always
be “extending the sphere of
its activity and drawing all
power into its impetuous
vortex.”
While the problem has
been worsening for genera-
tions, the era of cable televi-
sion and social media has put
the trend into overdrive. The
legislative branch is often lit-
tle more than a peanut gallery
— a parliament of pundits, as
I’ve often called it — full of
people who use their office
as a way to get on TV or as a
stepping stone to a presiden-
tial bid.
Schools often teach that
we have three “co-equal”
branches of government.
But that’s not what the
Constitution established.
Congress is the first and
supreme branch of govern-
ment, with the power to
declare war, write laws, cre-
ate all of the courts save the
Supreme Court, and raise
taxes.
We don’t live in that Con-
stitutional system. We live in
a constitutional-ish one.
© 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.