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About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (June 12, 2019)
2 Wednesday, , June 12, 2019 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon O P I N I O The flag of f the United States es represents FREEDOM Jonah Goldberg and has been an enduring symbol ymbol of our country’s y’s ideals since its early days. FLAG DAY is June 14 Queen Riann Cornett carries the Stars and Stripes at the 2019 Sisters Rodeo. PHOTO BY JERRY BALDOCK Letters to the Editor… The Nugget welcomes contributions from its readers, which must include the writer9s 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 Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned.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: This is in response to T.Lee Brown9s col- umn in the June 5 issue (<In the Pines,= page 18). Her reminisce of Sisters Coffee Company a few years back hit a chord with this long- time patron of the business. However, when she <commenced eaves- dropping= on a nearby conversation, my hack- les went up and alarm bells started ringing. It9s bad enough that Facebook invades our privacy and Alexa butts into conversations, but for someone to actually admit that she is listening to a private conversation, and is now getting paid to admit that, is pretty low. She also laments that the gentlemen, old- timers who9ve seen Sisters through thick and thin, didn9t respond to her smile as she walked by. She thereby made the assumption that they were the <unwelcoming, closed-off core of Sisters.= Did it occur to her that they were engrossed in the conversation and were focused on one another and didn9t even notice her? It must have been a good chat, since she soon became engrossed in it as well. The rest of her rambling column, much of which I skipped over because I didn9t want to also eavesdrop on a private conversation, con- cluded with the thought that some of the old ways aren9t worth preserving. All because a crusty older bloke wouldn9t smile at her and she listened to a conversation that was none of her business. It9s kind of sad. Allan Godsiff Sisters Weather Forecast Courtesy of the National Weather Service, Pendleton, Oregon Wednesday N Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday Partly Cloudy Mostly Sunny Partly Cloudy Sunny Mostly Sunny Mostly Sunny 89/59 86/51 80/48 83/51 81/51 81/51 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: Vicki Curlett & Patti Jo Beal 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. ©2019 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. The intellectual right is in the middle of a huge brou- haha, as some prominent right-wing commentators celebrate what they believe is the end of the <conser- vative consensus= around classical liberalism 4 free markets, limited govern- ment, the sovereignty of the individual and even in some cases free expression. Fox News9 Tucker Carlson recently lauded progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren9s economic program, to the cheers of a host of conser- vatives who now consider themselves advocates for something called <economic nationalism.= This argument really isn9t new, and there9s no reason to think it9s going away any- time soon, particularly so long as Donald Trump is in office and conservative intel- lectuals feel the need to bend their ideas to his actions or exploit his popularity (on the right) for the ideas they9ve long held. Instead, it9s worth think- ing about how to think about such things. Ideas are supremely important. As the late Irving Kristol said, <What rules the world is ideas, because ideas define the way reality is perceived.= I believe that. But real- ity 4 i.e., the physical realm we live in 4 is often what brings new ideas to the fore. We certainly understand this in the world of science. Newton, Einstein and Edison had ideas, and those ideas changed reality in ways that changed our ideas. Ever since the word <conservative= has had any meaning, conservatives have complained about moral licentiousness. Where they once complained about ris- ing hemlines, they now com- plain about widespread por- nography. But what9s often left out of the conversation is the role technology plays in changing how we think about such things. In the 1920s, conser- vatives complained about foreign ideas corrupting the youth, as if licentious- ness was some virus that escaped a lab in Paris and was brought home by return- ing soldiers. Left out of the conversation, for the most part, was the fact that one the great drivers of the rise in out-of-wedlock births (and shotgun weddings) in the 1920s was the widespread introduction of the automo- bile. Suddenly, teenagers had a much easier time escaping the prying eyes of parents and neighbors. I have no objection to the claim that ideas played an important role in chang- ing attitudes about sex. The problem is when you think the idea is the sum of the problem. Intellectuals tend to think this way because it9s fun to argue with Voltaire or Simone de Beaviour. It9s more difficult to argue with a Buick. These intellectuals become like the drunk who only looks for his lost car keys under the street lamp because the light is better there. The birth control pill has surely done more to cre- ate a culture of recreational sex than all of the writings of Alfred Kinsey and femi- nist intellectuals combined. Good luck trying to get rid of the pill. Of course, this isn9t just a dynamic on the right. One of the vexing problems for sup- porters of unalloyed abortion rights is that technology 4 from in-utero MRI to mirac- ulous innovations in neonatal care 4 is making the claim that late-stage fetuses are merely <uterine contents= or some other dehumanizing euphemism less plausible to millions of Americans. Many of the promoters of <economic nationalism= on the left and right, includ- ing Trump, cling to outdated ideas about how industry works. Manufacturing in the United States isn9t in decline; manufacturing jobs are, because technology replaces human labor with machine labor. Even if tariffs brought our factories home from Mexico and China (a dubious proposition), most of the jobs <brought back= will go to machines. Among the myriad dan- gers in all of this is that intellectuals think they can somehow plan and direct the consequences of technologi- cal innovation to achieve a society that fits their theories about how everyone should live. That9s not easy in an authoritarian society. It9s not possible in a free one. © 2019 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.