PAGE A4, KEIZERTIMES, NOVEMBER 27, 2015
KeizerOpinion
KEIZERTIMES.COM
Is it free enterprise or
defacing of public property?
A business is going
about Keizer neighbor-
hoods painting address
numbers on the curb in
front of houses.
A fl yer is left at the door
by a person calling them-
selves an Address America
Indpendent agent. The
fl yer asks for a $5 ‘donation’ to have
the house number painted on the
front curb as a security service. The
fl yer says “This is an essesntial ser-
vice as FIRE,Police,Paramedics, and
Neighborhood Watch personnel
will look fi rst to the curb for your
address.”
The fl yer continues on saying the
curb painting is a communtiy service
project and that the homeowner is
free to decline to the representative
that calls. But, if a homeowner accepts
the offer, they will be charged the $5
fee and they are invited to ‘donate’
up to $20 more.
Painting addresses on the curb in
front of one’s house is a good idea
and makes it easier for public safety
personnel in case of an emergency,
but the outfi t currenting trolling
Keizer for business makes it seem
like this is a project of our local
police and fi re services. They are not.
In a health emergency seconds
can be the difference between life
and death. The less time that police,
fi re or medical personnel spend
trying to locate a specifi c house, the
better for the person in trouble.
The public is not required to have
a number in front of their home and
homeowners should certainly not
feel pressured to pay for somethng
they neither asked for or ordered.
The city has received a number
of citizen complaints. Keizer’s
department of public
works does not authorize
the work, according to
director Bill Lawyer, but
they do not prohibit
the painting of address
numbers on curbs.
Keizer residents faced
with a fl yer regarding curb
painting have the freedom to accept
the offer, pay the fee and make an
additional donation. They are free
also to ignore the solicitaiton.
Over the years there have been a
number of organizations that have
swept through our neighborhoods
citing safety, security and timeliness
as reasons to pay up. A homeowner
can just as easily paint their own
number on the curb in front of their
house.
Painting addresses does help
public safety personnel more easier
locate a home they are looking for.
Driving down many streets in Keizer
the driver would be hard pressed to
see house numbers, especially in
the dark. Address number painting
would be an excellent project to
discuss at neighborhood association
meetings, at block parties during
National Night Out, or it can be
a fundraising project for the police
cadets or other youth public safety
organizations.
We are not opposed to house
numbers painted on the curb, if
it is done well. We are opposed to
entreneurs scaring homeowners into
buying something they don’t want
and paying a fee when they don’t
know where the money ends up,
especially the ‘additional’ donations
the current fl yers ask for.
— LAZ
editorial
Young talent does Keizer proud
By this time those who live for
sales have waited in the dark for
doors at local malls and stores to
open so they could rush forth and
grab their own “must have” item for
this holiday gift giving season.
Those who don’t want to hassle
with the crowds might migrate to
e-commerce and order gifts from the
comfort of their sofas.
Regardless of what is happening
in the world the holiday season will
arrive and we will each celebrate
according to our own tradition.
Some traditions are steeped in the
religiosity of the season—church
services, being charitible to others,
reveling in the warmth and spirit
of the holiday—be it Christmas,
Chaukah or Kwanzaa.
The season can be enjoyed even
more when we look about us and
partake in the events that mark the
season. It doesn’t matter if one has
children in school or even in arts
programs in one of local schools.
Salem-Keizer schools has some of
the best arts programs anywhere and
that is never so true as now.
McNary High School just
came off the rousing success of its
production of Disney’s Beauty and the
Beast (a sell out).
The Whiteaker Middle School
choir will join the Willamette Master
Chorus for three performances of
Vivaldi’s Gloria in December. We’re
duly impressed by that—these are
sixth, seventh and eigth graders
joining professional-grade singers in
a classicial concert.
Students from Keizer schools will
be performing at the state capitol
during the holidays. There will be
singing at the annual Christmas tree
lighting on Dec. 1.
If one wants their holiday season
to take on a less ‘gimme’ mood, they
should see our young people embody
the spirit of the season whether they
are a parent of a school child or not.
—LAZ
The Trump effect, still understated
By MICHAEL GERSON
The presidential candidate who has
consistently led the Republican fi eld
for four months, Donald Trump, has
proposed: forcibly expel 11 million
people from the country, requiring
a massive apparatus of enforcement,
courts and concentration camps;
rewrite or reinterpret the 14th
Amendment to end the Civil War-
era Republican principle of birthright
citizenship; build a 2,000-mile wall
on our southern border while forcing
Mexico to pay the cost. He has
characterized undocumented Mexican
immigrants as rapists and murderers,
and opposed the speaking of Spanish
in America.
Republican
candidates
have
proposed: to favor the admission of
Christian over Muslim refugees from
the Middle East; to “send home” Syrian
refugees, mainly women and children,
into a war zone; to “strongly consider”
the shutting down of suspicious
mosques; to compile a database of
Muslims and (perhaps) force them to
carry special identifi cation showing
their religion. They have compared
Syrian refugees to “rabid dogs,”
ruled out the possibility of a Muslim
president, and warned that Muslim
immigration to America is really
“colonization.”
There are, of course, Republican
presidential hopefuls who have
vigorously opposed each of these
proposals, arguments and stereotypes.
But Donald Trump has, so far, set the
terms of the primary debate and dragged
other candidates in the direction of
ethnic and religious exclusion. One
effect has been the legitimization of
even more extreme views—signaling
that it is OK to give voice to sentiments
and attitudes that, in previous
times, people would have been too
embar rassed
to share in
public. So in
Te n n e s s e e ,
the chairman
of the state
L e g i s l a t u re ’s
GOP caucus
has
called
for the mobilization of the National
Guard to round up Syrian refugees and
put them in camps. Many Republicans
are now on record saying that Islam
is inherently violent and inconsistent
with constitutional values (while often
displaying an ironic and disturbing
ignorance of those values).
Vin Weber, a prominent GOP
strategist, told me that many
Republicans remain in “denial mode”
about the possibility of Trump’s
nomination. “How can you be the
leader in national polls,” Weber says,
“and in the early states, and maybe
even in money, and be counted out?”
In spite of saturation media coverage,
Weber thinks the Trump effect on the
GOP is “understated.” The attention
of commentators has often been
focused on the horserace aspect of
the campaign or on the narrative of
insider vs. outsider, rather than on what
Weber calls Trump’s “transformational
message.”
That message comes in the context
of a long period of political pessimism
—more than 10 years in which polls
have generally found more than 60
percent of Americans believing that
their country is on the wrong track.
There has been an angry decline in
respect for most social institutions,
including government. This has left
some Americans more open to radical
political answers—more prepared, in
Weber’s words, “to roll the dice on the
future of the country.”
“We’re going to have to do things,”
says Trump with menacing vagueness,
“that we never did before.” And if
disrespect for institutions is common,
Trump is its perfect vehicle—
combining the snark of Twitter with
the staged anger and grudges of reality
television.
But in all this, it is easy to miss
Trump’s policy ambition. He would
spark trade wars with China and
Mexico and scrap the world trading
system—which Republicans have
helped construct since World War
II—replacing it with an older kind
of mercantilism. He would make
the seizure of Middle Eastern oil the
centerpiece of his regional strategy—
turning a spurious liberal charge into
a foreign policy doctrine, and uniting
the Arab world in rage and resentment.
And Trump would make, has
already half-made, the GOP into an
anti-immigrant party. Much of Trump’s
appeal is reactionary. He has tapped
into a sense that an older America is
being lost. In a recent poll, 62 percent
of Republicans reported feeling like “a
stranger in their own country.” This is
a protest against rapid and disorienting
social change, against an increasingly
multicultural country, and against the
changes of the Obama years.
It does not take much political
talent to turn this sense of cultural
displacement into anti-immigrant
resentment. Only a reckless disregard for
the moral and political consequences.
As denial in the GOP fades, a question
is laid upon the table: Is it possible, and
morally permissible, for economic and
foreign policy conservatives, and for
Republicans motivated by their faith,
to share a coalition with the advocates
of an increasingly raw and repugnant
nativism?
Divided as we Americans are
over President Obama’s plan to
resettle 10,000 Syrian refugees by
next year, there are many other
concerns we share. Primarly because
there may be Jihadist terrorists
among those seeking safety and they
will die without hesitation for their
cause due to the promise of heavenly
rewards. The terrorists are dedicated
to destroying America as they see us
as modern day “crusaders,” coming to
drive Islam out. Then, too, Americans
are Infi dels seen as worthless because
they are non-believers and can be
destroyed by true believers without
guilt or moral compunction.
Persian Gulf states are afraid that
the refugees’ arrival will cause huge
social disruptions and plunge them
into greater turmoil than what’s
already underway. The European
nations of southern climes are
currently
on
the
economic
“ropes” and anxious already whether
they can remain stable enough to
see any future. Northern European
nations are most willing to accept
refugees but are edgy about how many
terrorists will attack the native
population to revenge the bombings
of ISIS.
Regarding Iraqi and Syrian
refugees, there’s a struggle in me
over whether to follow my heart or
my head. When I deliberate on the
fl eeing refugees my humanitarian side
says, “Let’s give these people a new
chance” while my rational side urges,
“Don’t be silly, these people cannot
be trusted.” Then there’s the question
of why these people won’t stand and
fi ght which may be explained by
the spread of Wahhabism so certain
other Saudis, especially the royal
family,
will
not die for the
cause.
The
bottom line in
my thinking on
this matter is to
confess a fairly
deep-seated
fear that so many young, male single
refugees coming here harbor a desire
to bring about not only my demise
but the demise of everyone I care
about and love.
In the 1980s I was an American
civilian working for the Arabian
American
Oil
Company
(ARAMCO) in Saudi Arabia, and
having also traveled widely in the
Middle East during those years, the
experience afforded a front-row
seat to getting acquainted with
Arab customs, traditions and the
practice of Islam there. Saudi Arabia
is the most conservative of the Islam
nations, yet other nations in the
Middle East maintain a fairly strict
following of Islam’s code of conduct.
It is diffi cult for an American to see
how the females in the population put
up with being what we’d call second
class citizens at best, while the males
pretty much do as they please within
the dictates of Islam. I speculated
that the reason it appears easy for the
women is that they are born into a
male-dominated society to which
they get perfectly assimilated.
Meanwhile, the men can break the
code as long as they keep quiet about
it. I got to know several Arabs quite
well, including many who worked
for ARAMCO but hailed from other
nations in the Middle East, including
many a Palestinian for whom the
Saudis have great sympathy and hire
them often for no other reason than
to free them from what’s perceived to
be the Israeli yoke. There are Muslims
working there also from, for example,
Pakistan and The Philippines.
In several Arab nations the fi ghting
age men are disinclined to fi ght for
their nation but have been ready of late
to join up with the likes of al-Queda
and ISIS operatives. This is most
important in understanding Saudi
Arabians. Saudi Arabia’s oil revenue
is a source of money to support the
extremist Sunni Wahhabism; it is the
money establishing madrasas wherever
possible, dedicated to the spread of
the Muslim around the world.
Politicians ask why we Americans
let these people use our troops to fi ght
their battles with those who would like
to get control of oil in the petroleum-
rich nations of the Gulf States. The
reason I can give to answer that
question has to do with the fact Saudi
Arabia and its immediate neighbors
are very rich from oil sales and can
afford to hire others to do their
dirty jobs. Before ARAMCO was
nationalized in the 1970s, it was
mostly Americans and the British
that established and maintained the
oil fi elds and managed the enterprise.
The American and British managers
still do most of that work with
fi gurehead Saudis pretending to be
in charge. The get-your-hands-
dirty work remains the prerogative
of Muslim men recruited from third
world nations.
This question of the refugees is
a tough one in which to fi nd one’s
way. Nevertheless the fi nal score in
my mind’s struggle is head 1, heart 0.
other
views
(Washington Post Writers Group)
Head wins over heart regarding refugees
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