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About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 6, 2019)
2 Wednesday, November 6, 2019 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 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 Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned.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: When does freedom of speech become defamatory, partial truth and disrespect- ful? Craig Rullman harms his credibility by painting every Democrat or maybe every Rebublican with the same brush. Rullman sug- gests that all Democrats are guilty of fighting tirelessly for slavery and on he goes ad-nau- seum to support his generalizations. My great-grandparents, dyed-in-the-wool Southern Democrats, were a historically doc- umented part of the Underground Railroad, helping to shelter, clothe and feed countless slaves seeking freedom. Rullman9s column, September 25, does nothing but create further divisiveness between political parties. Where is the respectful dis- course in such a short-sighted and narrow- minded article? I expect more from him than mean-spirited, disrespectful generalities. Let us live to respect others and recognize that all of us want the same things for our community, our families, our world. The pen may well be mightier than the sword 4 but when you wield it, be ever mind- ful of the wounds you inflict. As for the main gist of his column, the right to keep and bear arms, he went for the humor with the mental picture I had of Elizabeth Warren arriving to kick down my mom9s door and take her firearm. My 80-year-old mom claimed to be Charlton Heston9s best friend and staunch member of the NRA. Nobody would take her firearms, but then my mom didn9t sport an UZI! Karen Keady s s s To the Editor: In reaction to Roger Engstrom, who wants to help prevent bee extinction and evidently was surprised from the Science Club lecture See LETTERS on page 30 Sisters Weather Forecast Courtesy of the National Weather Service, Pendleton, Oregon Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday Partly Cloudy Partly Cloudy Partly Cloudy Mostly Cloudy Partly Cloudy Partly Cloudy 56/29 59/37 72/40 67/42 63/35 60/40 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 Newspaper9s 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. Primaries are a lot like Christmas: The shopping season begins way before, and things rarely live up to expectations. I still like Christmas, but I9m happy to play the Grinch with the primaries. We should get rid of them. If I could, I9d sneak into the Whovilles of Iowa and New Hampshire and steal the vot- ing machines, ballots and bad coffee. I n t h e p a s t , m y Grinchiness was mostly reserved for the <first in the nation= Iowa and New Hampshire votes. Why should these two states have so much power? Two gen- erations of political consul- tants have made their careers by knowing how to fill hotel rooms in Des Moines and whose palms to grease in Nashua. Scour the Federalist Papers and the Constitution and you9ll find no mention of primaries, never mind the Hawkeye and Granite State Hegemony. And yet, if you win in either or both, you9re statistically likely to become your party9s nominee. The Iowa caucuses are a particular affront. If it weren9t for them, there9d be no ethanol subsidies, which are bad for your car, the economy and the envi- ronment. If such things bother you, Iowa and New Hampshire are also very white places, and I don9t mean in the white Christmas sense. But the proposed rem- edies 4 rotating the primary states every four years, nuk- ing Iowa from orbit, etc. 4 don9t really fix the underly- ing problem. We shouldn9t have primaries at all 4and that goes for Senate and House primaries, too. Primaries date back to the early 20th century, but they never mattered much until 1972, when the Democrats (with Republicans soon to follow) did something revo- lutionary: They voluntarily relinquished the ability to choose their own candidates. The argument for democ- ratizing the selection of can- didates was justified with the preposterous notion that there9s nothing wrong with democracy that more democ- racy can9t fix. (It9s this pot- ted thinking that leads peo- ple to argue for lowering the voting age to get more elec- toral input from teenagers). Those infamous <smoke- filled rooms= 4 among my favorite kinds of rooms, by the way 4 were supposedly bad because they allowed party bosses to impose their choices on voters. There9s no doubt mistakes were made by those party fat cats and fixers, but those smoke-filled rooms also gave us Lincoln, Coolidge, the Roosevelts, E i s e n h o w e r, Tr u m a n , Kennedy, et al. One of the paradoxes of democracy is that it depends on healthy institutions that are fundamentally undemo- cratic. Families don9t put everything to a vote, nor do churches, the Boy Scouts or the Marines. Back before the parties were castrated by the primaries (and other subse- quent <reforms=), they had the power to impose stan- dards on candidates and to protect their long-term inter- ests and principles. James Madison was a better philosopher than Alexander Hamilton (though a worse rapper). He under- stood that parties were a necessary tool of democracy because they forced differ- ent factions and interests to compromise in order to win. Kindred groups were willing to sacrifice a few items from their wish lists if it meant their party would be able to deliver on most of its agenda. Primaries blow all of that up. Candidates on the left and right promise purity in all things, and elected politi- cians are often more scared of a primary challenge than a general election contest. Pandering to the most pas- sionately ideological voters is the direct result of democ- ratizing party decisions. This leaves the parties behaving like advertising agencies for whichever can- didate happened to exploit outrage the best 4 or lied most convincingly about the things they can deliver. The Democrats right now are like department store Santas promising the kids jet- packs and lightsabers. Once elected, they9ll be lucky to deliver socks. And the result- ing outrage will restart the whole stupid cycle all over again. © 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.