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Wednesday, July 31, 2019 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:
A sheriff9s deputy came to my house July
24 with the remains of three bills I9d put into
the outgoing mail slot.
What was returned was the envelopes of the
three, one of the checks and two of the pay-
ment vouchers. Two checks are missing and
one voucher which also contained my SSN.
Whoever did this now has my name, address,
SNN and bank information.
This is not a petty crime; this is a federal
offense as well as a state felony. My clus-
ter mail unit is across the street from the
new Ponderosa Heights apartment complex
on Brooks Camp Road. There has been an
increase in crime since these apartments have
been occupied, the deputy had another stolen
envelope besides the three mentioned above,
the club house property for the Pines adja-
cent to this cluster mail unit was vandalized
in May, there has been other instances as well.
Is this the new face of Sisters? Can we no
longer feel safe about putting our mail into the
outgoing mail slot? What9s next? This clus-
ter mail unit is used by the Pines community
which includes 50 homes in the 55 and over
section known as Brooks Camp Village, most
of the residents of BCV are well into their
70s and many in their 90s, are we putting our
senior community at risk when they simply
want to collect and send mail?
This is a sad state when one can no longer
feel safe in a small town such as Sisters.
Chris Carr
Sisters Weather Forecast
Courtesy of the National Weather Service, Pendleton, Oregon
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Monday
Sunny
Sunny
Mostly Sunny
Sunny
Mostly Sunny
Sunny
88/55
88/53
83/51
88/56
91/56
91/55
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I want to put in a good
word for partisanship.
This might sound
strange to some readers.
I9ve written a lot about our
problem with tribalism,
including hyper-partisan-
ship and political polariza-
tion. It was a major theme
of my cheerily titled book
<Suicide of the West.= So
I9m happy to concede that
too much partisanship
4 or partisanship of the
wrong kind 4 can be very
bad.
But unity can be bad
too. Excessive unity cul-
tivates groupthink and
breeds contempt for dis-
sent. It tends to ride rough-
shod over minorities, and
not just in the sense of
racial, religious or sexual
groups. Ideological minori-
ties 4 including the small-
est minority, the individual
4 can get trampled by the
unity stampede.
Self-described national-
ists insist the country needs
more unity 4 around
their ideas. Self-described
socialists also crave unity,
but only around their
agenda. At various times
and places, Catholics,
Protestants, Muslims and
Hindus have all strived
for unity, but only on their
terms. In any large soci-
ety, the demand for unity
is usually the demand for
power in a winner-take-all
contest between different
groups.
Our Constitution is
set up around the idea
that unity is scarier than
disunity. The founders
designed a system that pre-
vented any one group, or
<faction,= from imposing
its one-size-fits-all unity
on everybody.
Ironically, the founders
never envisioned political
parties as a major com-
ponent of this system.
James Madison eventually
embraced parties, but most
of the founders were closer
to Thomas Jefferson9s
view that if the only way
he could get into heaven
was by joining a party, he
wouldn9t go.
Think of it this way:
Courtrooms are partisan
battlefields. The defense
attorney is a zealous
advocate for acquittal.
The prosecutor is equally
passionate about convic-
tion. Both sides must deal
honestly, but it is the com-
petition between the two
sides, the questioning of
evidence, the inquiry into
motives and methods, that
produces a just outcome.
Of course, sometimes it
goes wrong. But it9s the
best system we9ve got.
This is how the good
kind of partisanship is sup-
posed to work. Partisans
have all manner of incen-
tives to poke holes in the
opposition9s arguments
and proposals4some
patriotic and principled,
some more base and self-
ish. But the process of
political combat, which
is supposed to take place
in Congress, not on cable
TV or Twitter, should get
us closer to both the truth
and a consensus about the
way forward. The public
is supposed to be the jury.
Unfortunately, too many
jurors only want to hear
arguments from either the
defense or the prosecution.
It9s a cliche to note that
the party out of power
only cares about deficits
and debt when it is out of
power. This hypocrisy is
annoying and at times dis-
honorable. But it9s better
than the alternative. If it9s
true that unlimited borrow-
ing, mostly from China,
to pay for things we can9t
afford is bad, better to have
someone saying so, even if
they9re doing it for cynical
purposes. Such complaints
at least serve to check run-
away deficit spending.
Last week we crossed
a Rubicon with the new
bipartisan budget deal pro-
posed by President Donald
Trump and House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi. It marks the
end of either party even
pretending to care about
such things. It9s a victory
of the sort of bipartisan-
ship and unity so many
claim this country needs.
And it is a perfect example
of how unity around a bad
thing is worse than dis-
unity over what constitutes
a good thing.
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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.