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About Keizertimes. (Salem, Or.) 1979-current | View Entire Issue (March 4, 2016)
PAGE A4, KEIZERTIMES, MARCH 4, 2016 KeizerOpinion KEIZERTIMES.COM The end of a parade It was exciting in 2011 when the Festival of Lights Holiday Parade migrated from Salem to Keizer. We have the Miracle of Christ- mas lighting display in the Gubser neighborhood. We have the annual Keizer Iris Festival parade. Having the Lights parade come to Keizer was a beautiful feather in our civic cap. Unfortunately, nothing lasts forever. Parade organizers an- nounced this week that the Festival of Lights Parade is no more. After 25 years the dedicated volunteer Cheryl Mitchell decided it was time to step back, enjoy life and travel the world with her husband. Organizing the parade (one of the largest light parades in the United States) is practically a full-time vol- unteer endeavor. Once one year’s pa- rade is fi nished, planning for the next parade begins almost immediately. Though there will be no Festival of Lights Pa- rade this December, we hope to see a volunteer, an organization or a com- pany pick up the banner and ressurect it for future years. A holiday parade such as this should not go away without a fi ght. It draws spectators from around the region which makes it a good marketing tool for the city and it is good for businesses along the parade route that work to take advantage of the large crowds. A lighted holiday parade is not inexpensive nor easy to stage. Our community has the experience and knowledge to put on one of the state’s largest parades (Iris Festival). Who will step up to put their expe- rience to work on a holiday parade? —LAZ editorial A detrimental proposal By KAYLI HANLEY Agriculture. A way of life that dates back to America’s Founding Fa- thers. It is not only a life- style that allows people to produce food, it is a lifestyle that allows peo- ple to care for the land in such a way that the land is brought to its fullest potential. In Eastern Or- egon, some groups seek to designate 2.5 million acres of Oregon land into a national monument. This is a move that would be devastating to the ranchers and community of Malheur County. Jerome Rosa, executive director for Oregon Cattlemen’s Association, elaborated on why this designation would hurt Oregon ranchers. “In essence, it could devastate the local economy, their businesses, their culture and their children’s future. The designation would establish ad- ditional restrictions that would affect or eliminate their ability to ranch in that area,” he said. Ranchers who live in the area aren’t fully sure what to expect, but looking at other monument designa- tions, things don’t look good. “I don’t have a clue what will happen,” said past OCA President and current Malheur County ranch- er Bob Skinner. “They tell you it’s not going to affect ranching, but his- torically (monument designations) are a disaster.” Skinner said he cannot fi nd anywhere where a monument desig- nation has been a success story for ranching. He said the designation also brings concern for how future wildfi re management through the Range Land Fire Protection Association (RFPA), a group largely made up of local citizens and ranchers, will occur. “We are the front line for fi re suppression. If history repeats itself, we suspect RFPA’s won’t be able to access the roads needed to fi ght wildfi res easily,” Skinner said. Several efforts are in progress to try and stop the monument desig- nation in Malheur County. “OCA is working with local ranching groups, a public relations group, and with state and federal legislatures to pre- vent the monument designation,” Rosa said. Meanwhile, those in Malheur County brace themselves for the pos- sibility of a designation that would threaten their way of life. “Cattle is the number one industry in Malheur County,” Skinner said. “If we take a bunch of cattle out of the county, it’s going to devastate its economy. It will have an impact on the state.” Thank you, Uptown Music Music’s good will and the generosity of the mu- sic community, the food bank received more than $900 and 200 pounds of food to put on the pan- try shelves. That’s a song worth singing! Thanks Uptown for your sustain- ing support of our food ministry and the ongoing fi ght against hunger. Curt McCormack, Director Keizer Community Food Bank guest column (Kayli Hanley is the communica- tons director for the Oregon Cattle- men’s Association.) letters To the Editor: On behalf of the Keizer Community Food Bank, I want to wish Paul Elliott and the Uptown Music staff a happy anni- versary for 25 years of service to the music community in Keizer and the Salem area. Also extended kudos for making their celebration party a fund raiser for the KCFB. Because of Uptown Keizertimes Wheatland Publishing Corp. • 142 Chemawa Road N. • Keizer, Oregon 97303 phone: 503.390.1051 • web: www.keizertimes.com • email: kt@keizertimes.com SUBSCRIPTIONS NEWS EDITOR Craig Murphy editor@keizertimes.com ASSOCIATE EDITOR Eric A. Howald news@keizertimes.com One year: $25 in Marion County, $33 outside Marion County, $45 outside Oregon PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY ADVERTISING Publication No: USPS 679-430 Paula Moseley advertising@keizertimes.com POSTMASTER Send address changes to: PRODUCTION MANAGER Andrew Jackson Keizertimes Circulation graphics@keizertimes.com 142 Chemawa Road N. LEGAL NOTICES Keizer, OR 97303 legals@keizertimes.com EDITOR & PUBLISHER Lyndon Zaitz publisher@keizertimes.com BUSINESS MANAGER Laurie Painter billing@keizertimes.com Periodical postage paid at Salem, Oregon RECEPTION Lori Beyeler facebook.com/keizertimes twitter.com/keizertimes Trump’s destructive nationalism By MICHAEL GERSON The main focus of Donald Trump’s media coverage has been his populist disdain for elites. But his main focus has often been a strident version of American nationalism. Trump has offered this explanation of his own ambitions: “The reason I’m thinking about [running for of- fi ce],” he told the Conservative Po- litical Action Conference (CPAC) in 2011, “is that the United States has become a whipping post for the rest of the world. ... I deal with people from China, I deal with people from Mexico. They cannot believe what they’re getting away with.” It is diffi cult to discern a foreign policy in Trump’s oeuvre of rambling, extemporaneous speechmaking and Twitter pronouncements. He usually communicates without a hint of ac- tual argument. But there is some con- sistency to his various statements. Trump believes that American al- lies in Europe and Asia have become free riders that should defend them- selves and pay their own way. He calls the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty unfair. In exchange for the protection of South Korea, he argues, “we get prac- tically nothing.” Mexico is “ripping us off ” and purposely sending us crimi- nals. It must be compelled to pay for a continent-wide wall. Trump proposes to “tax China for each bad act” and has raised the possibility of a 45 per- cent tariff. Vladimir Putin, in contrast, should be given a free hand in the Middle East to go after Sunni radicals and other opponents of the Syrian re- gime. And America should focus on killing terrorists as well as targeting their families for murder, apparently on the theory that war crimes are a demonstration of super-duper tough- ness. As Trump’s political pros- pects have im- proved, we are required to give these foreign policy views more serious analysis, which is more than Trump himself has done. When pressed on such issues in debates and interviews, he is utterly incoherent. A man who confuses the Kurds with the Quds (Iran’s expeditionary military force) hasn’t the slightest familiarity with current events in the Middle East. And it feels like we have, so far, explored only the fringes of his ignorance. But it is the theory behind Trump’s threats that is particularly dangerous. He is not an isolationist, in the Rand Paul sense. He is more of a Jacksonian (in Walter Russell Mead’s typology) —preferring a strong America that is occasionally roused to kill its enemies but then returns home and avoids en- tangling international commitments. America, in this view, should vigor- ously pursue narrow national inter- ests and seek to be feared rather than loved. This conception of America’s in- ternational role was common, before America had a serious international role. A Gallup poll from 1937 showed that 70 percent of Americans thought their intervention in World War I had been a mistake. In early 1940, as Ger- man intentions of conquest were clear, less than 10 percent thought America should send its military abroad. But this view of America is as rel- evant to current affairs as political events in ancient Rome. “The great need today isn’t to ‘beat’ core al- lies such as Mexico and Japan, while working with Vladimir Putin,” George other views Mason University’s Colin Dueck ex- plains diplomatically. “On the con- trary, the urgent need is to constrain aggressors such as Putin while sup- porting core U.S. allies like Mexico and Japan.” Less gently put, Trump would be a president who could not reliably tell America’s enemies from its friends. He contemplates actions like weak- ening American security assurances to South Korea that might invite war (recall the outcome in 1950 of Sec- retary of State Dean Acheson’s impli- cation that South Korea was outside America’s “defensive perimeter”). Trump promises actions—like forcing the Mexican government to fund the great wall of Trump—that are, in the formal language of international rela- tions, loony, unhinged, bonkers. His move to impose massive tariffs against China would earn derisive laughter at the World Trade Organization; if he persisted anyway, it might blow up the global trading order and dramatically increase tensions in Asia. A Jacksonian role for America is positively dangerous in a world where many threats—terrorism, pandemic disease, refugee fl ows, drug cartels— emerge in failed states and hopeless places. It has never been more evident that the success of America depends on an expanding system of free trade, free markets, democratic governance and strong alliances—upheld, in Asia, Europe and elsewhere, by American security guarantees. Trump’s version of American na- tionalism without reference to Ameri- can principles is Putinism by another name. And it is just one more way that Trump would sully the spirit of the nation he seeks to lead. (Washington Post Writers Group) Will we see more citizen militias? One supposes that Oregonians sleep more peacefully these nights knowing that not only have the occupiers of the wildlife refuge in Harney Coun- ty given up the site, most of them are in jail and under indictment over their 41-day siege. Nevertheless, it’d be a whole lot more reassuring if we knew that the present moment brought us to a place where the militia movement had been stopped; unfortunately there are many more militias out there to threaten our security and safety than there are members of ISIS and other external organizations that seek to do us no good. Citizen militias are just the young- est of the major right-wing anti- government movements in the U.S., although it arguably has seared itself into the American consciousness as few if any other a so-called fringe movement has. Militia was incor- rectly linked to the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 but thereby became a household name. However, if those folks were not linked to Oklahoma City, they have been associated with other bombing plots, conspiracies and serious violations of the law. Their ex- treme anti-government ideology, de- votion to conspiracy theories without factual connections, and fi xation with and purchase of excessive weaponry and paramilitary organization, lead them to behave in ways that arouse concerns on the part of public offi - cials, law enforcement and the public at large. The extreme right has long held a special fascination with paramili- tary groups. They existed before the second World War while the militia movement now has ties with Posse Comitatus which developed a grand conspiratorial view of American his- tory and government, one that stood with the idea that the legitimate gov- ernment had been taken over by con- spirators and replaced with a illegiti- mate, tyran- nical govern- ment. Hence, Posse members believed that the people had the power and responsibil- ity to “take back” the government by force, using arms to do so. What turned their idea of what’s good and right into reality in the early 1990s were several events that made angry people on the extreme right out of them, suffi ciently large enough to start a new movement. The events that angered them included the election of Bill Clinton, the Rod- ney King riots, Ruby Ridge (1992), Waco (1993) and the North Ameri- can Free Trade Agreement. Critical to what’s happened since, to the extreme right these were examples of a gov- ernment run amok and one willing to stop at nothing to destroy those peo- ple who refused to conform. These matters provided a rebirth to several extremeist movements, from Christian Identity activists to sovereign citizens and the militia movement organized to prevent another Ruby Ridge. Many militia members and leaders are gun-rights activists who fear immi- nent gun confi scation as well as those who maintain a fascination with gov- ernment conspiracies. The combina- tion of anger at the government, fear of gun confi scation and susceptibility to great conspiracy theories is what has formed the core of the militia movement’s ideology. Criminal activ- ity remains more or less constant with militia members getting themselves in trouble with the law on a fairly regu- lar basis. The occupiers and the laws gene h. mcintyre they broke when they gathered and took over the federal refuge in Harney County is what one might refer to as “par for the course” with these folks. The U.S. Constitution was designed in an effort to establish and maintain a democracy. It works reasonably well and most Americans prefer its contin- uation versus a bunch of ill-informed and easy-to-bamboozle hoodlums, the likes of which the militia move- ment represents. Apparently there’s no turning these people into responsible, law-abiding citizens because of their belief in guns for everyone, no matter their lack of sanity, and that the U.S. government is owned and operated only by those persons who want to take all freedoms away and incarcerate accordingly. It might be helpful to show them how good they’ve got it compared to living in most other countries on our planet. Yet, whatever rant and rave is appropriate, such effort to reform them will not change the mindlessness and ignorance of these people. Law enforcement did not head directly into them, like was done at Waco and Ruby Ridge, because it would only reinforce their hatred of our govern- ment and their acting out as has been proven in Harney County. So, the only way found in these United States to deal effectively with this kind of government-hater is to hit them in the pocketbook real hard (the report- ed costs related to the 41-day occu- pation in Harney County are at least $3.3 million) and incarcerate them for long periods in hopes that, given time to refl ect on their foolishness, (although I’m not counting on it) a measure of better sense will occur. (Gene H. McIntyre’s column ap- pears weekly in the Keizertimes.)
