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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 Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned.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
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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.