APRzL 6, 2018, KEzZERTzMES, PAGE A5
KeizerOpinion
KEIZERTIMES.COM
The quiet dignity of a
community man
He never sought out the spotlight,
yet he helped shape Keizer into what
it is today. John Carpenter Jenkins
passed away on Easter Sunday at the
age of 94.
A Nebraska native, Jenkins served
his country in the Signal
Company. He rose to the
rank of corporal, provid-
ing, in part, radio com-
munication between Army
aircraft and their base on
Guam.
Taking advantage of the
G.I. Bill, Jenkins enrolled
in the University of Nebraska and
took engineering courses. Engineer-
ing was to become his life-long career.
John and his wife Gina moved to
Keizer in 1956 and have lived in the
same house since. The couple had
three children and fi ve grandchildren.
As a member of the Rotary Club
of Keizer for more than 40 years, Jen-
kins served as the unoffi cial historian
of the city’s most infl uential group. A
supporter of all kids, he was an impor-
tant conduit between the hundreds of
exchange students from around the
world that called Keizer home for a
year. Jenkins kept the club informed
of the exchange students when they
returned home and kept those stu-
dents informed of what was happen-
ing in their ‘adopted’ city.
Locally he served as cubmaster of
the Cub Scout Pack 141, a
sturdy, outgoing mentor to
years of Keizer boys.
In early 1995, Jen-
kins was surprised by the
Chamber of Commerce
and named as Keizer’s First
Citizen, an honor bestowed
on those who volunteer in
the community. He was instrumental
in the effort to save the original Keizer
School building that now serves as the
Keizer Cultural Center on the Keizer
Civic Center campus.
A volunteer all of his life—due
to the infl uence of his father—Jen-
kins made Keizer a better place. He
worked mostly behind the scenes; he
knew that’s where the real work was
done.
He was a friend to all, especially the
kids from near and far.
— LAZ
our
opinion
The good things about America
By MICHAEL F. VALDEZ
I do not live in a blue or red state,
but the United States of America.
Who could believe the highest of-
fi ce in our United States, the presi-
dency, regardless of which party holds
that position, can be mocked, lied
about and tried for impeachment by
our own Congress, supported by some
federal courts.
In the past, their negative remarks
were kept to themselves.
I have always stated, “A
country that falls, falls from
within.” Sadly, we are ap-
proaching those days at a
very fast pace. The current
president is being held back
by irresponsible people of
our country, why? What
have our Senators and
Congressman done for the
state of Oregon? Nothing. Oregon is
in debt, the city of Salem is in debt. As
of 2016, Oregon was ranked fourth in
divorces in the United States. We are
ranked in the lower 10 percent as far
as poverty is concerned. Now tell me
what our local government has done
for us? Yet we continue to send the
same deadbeats back to Washington,
D.C. and elect the same deadbeats
here in our state government. All our
elected offi cials say is, “Resist, resist.”
Resist, what? Oregon loses in the end.
No, Governor Brown, it is not your
state, it belongs to the citizens of Or-
egon. Judge Vance Day has been found
guilty already? How?
Our military is the strongest in
the world, being held back by know-
it-alls in Washington, D.C. who have
never served in the armed forces or
seen a battle. The ones, who have
served, claim to be the Jehovah’s in the
righteousness and wisdom. They let
Michael Moore’s movies be fed to our
college students, showing the Unites
States as the aggressors.
I am tired and weary of being lec-
tured by foreign countries who have
never won a battle yet they continue
to ask for millions of U.S. dollars in
aid and complain if they don’t receive
enough. I say stop our support and get
the United Nations out of the United
States. Put the U.N in Germany or
France and let them carry the burden.
They hate us and always vote against
us as well. I am tired of the breast beat-
ers, critics of America at home and
abroad who set impossible yardsticks
for the United States, but never apply
the same standards for other countries.
We never lost the Vietnam War, the
Iraq or Afghanistan wars, not the sol-
diers on the ground, but the Ameri-
cans who cried for peace were the
losers of that war. Whining parents
and a weak Congress lost
their backbone. This trust
in American sentimen-
tality is reinforced every
time the terrorist read our
editorials, watch our bi-
ased television stations or
listen to a debate between
all Americans alike. This
encourages them to set
bombs and take pot shots
at our troops. In this case, the Ameri-
can warrior really is turned in as the
victim. Right now back east, they are
fi ghting over statues dated back to the
Civil War era. How many people are
aware that China owns more than 2
percent of Oregon land? Nobody
knows how much more for sure, but
every state in the nation is in the same
situation—China owns land in every
state of the United States.
As I previously stated, every coun-
try that falls always falls from within.
I’m so glad to be an American after
37 and a half years of military service,
of which three of those years were in
combat as an infantry offi cer in Viet-
nam. I stand ready to defend our way
of life. If you cannot meet our stan-
dards, then leave and go live in some
other country. I’m tired of hearing
about all of the bad things of America.
Let’s start today talking and support-
ing all the good things we stand for.
But, it is too late; the fi nal state of it is
long but deteriorating life was brought
about when Congress and the federal
courts succumbed to the power of the
internal struggle that started years ago.
It is expected with the passing of the
Republic, an alternative nation we
will become.
Help us God, let us rest in peace
guest
opinion
(Michael F. Valdez lives in Keizer.
He retired from the infantry with the
rank of Colonel.)
Trumpism is not a normal political moment
By MICHAEL GERSON
Is it time for anti-Trump conser-
vatives to recognize that they have
lost the political and policy battle
within the GOP and to accommo-
date themselves as best they can to
an uncomfortable reality?
This is the argument of
the Ethics and Public Pol-
icy Center’s Henry Olsen,
one of the most thought-
ful political analysts on
the right. On issues such
as trade, immigration, and
the Muslim travel ban, he
argues, Republican crit-
ics of Donald Trump are
dramatically “out of step
with conservatives.” And the pos-
sible options are limited. A primary
challenge to Trump is “doomed to
failure.” The creation of a third party
is a pipe dream, since “there simply
aren’t enough dissatisfi ed conserva-
tives.”
This leaves anti-Trump conserva-
tives, in Olsen’s view, with one vi-
able choice—to make peace with
a Trump-dominated movement.
“If they are willing to work with
other conservative-movement types
on immigration and trade to reach
common ground,” he contends,
“they might fi nd other longtime
conservatives are willing to work
with them.” Olsen’s historical mod-
el is conservative “fusionism”—a
theory associated with conservative
thinker Frank Meyer that asserted
common political and intellectual
ground between social conservatives
and libertarians in the middle of the
last century.
Olsen’s hope for a return to
normalcy within the conservative
movement—in which even deep
disagreements did not lead to com-
plete rupture—is understandable.
But his real contribution is probably
not what he intended. Olsen sees
this as an important but normal po-
litical moment, in which the policy
views of populists and conservative
intellectuals need to be reconciled
on issues such as trade and immigra-
tion. An intellectual dialectic within
the Republican coalition is straining
to produce a new, more
pro-worker synthesis—
which Olsen himself has
long advocated. But this
begs the question: Is this a
normal political moment?
If Trump were merely
proposing a border wall
and the more aggressive
employment of tariffs,
we would be engaged in
a debate, not facing a schism. Both
Ronald Reagan and George W.
Bush played the tariff chess game. As
a Republican presidential candidate,
Mitt Romney endorsed the mas-
sive “self-deportation” of undocu-
mented workers without the rise of
a #NeverRomney movement.
But it is blind, even obtuse, to
place Trumpism in the same cat-
egory. Trump’s policy proposals—
the details of which Trump himself
seems unconcerned and uninformed
about—are symbolic expressions of
a certain approach to politics. The
stated purpose of Trump’s border
wall is to keep out a contagion of
Mexican rapists and murderers. His
argument is not taken from Heritage
Foundation policy papers. He makes
it by quoting the racist poem “The
Snake,” which compares migrants
to dangerous vermin. Trump pro-
poses to ban migration from some
Muslim-majority countries because
Muslim refugees, as he sees it, are
a Trojan horse threat of terrorism.
Trump’s policy ideas are incidental
to his message of dehumanization.
So how do we split the political
difference on this one? Shall we talk
about Mexican migrants as rapists
the
opinion
of
others
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(Washington Post Writers Group)
The president we have
Recall is fading. Nevertheless,
memory reminds us that President
Donald Trump led us to believe that as
president he would be looking after all
Americans. So far, he’s worked mainly
on behalf of opposites to his oft-re-
peated promises during the campaign
as he now leads and directs his cabinet
to dismantle and otherwise do away
with the federal regula-
tions that were hard-
fought into existence over
many decades and thereby
have protected American
consumers
everywhere
and on-the-job workers
through both Republican
and Democratic adminis-
trations.
Sally Greenberg, ex-
ecutive director of the
National Consumers League is one
national leader who takes issue with
Trump’s promises while he ran for of-
fi ce and what he and his immediate
subordinates have been up to during
the past 15 months. She’s said, “The
consumer protections that were put in
place over the past two generations are
being destroyed brick by brick under
the Trump administration.” That may
sound as an exaggeration but, should
one read far and wide, he will fi nd that
same conclusion has been reached by
every consumer advocate in the na-
tion.
Robert Weissman, president of
Public Citizen, has said this adminis-
tration is the most anti- and de-regu-
latory in American history. Columnist
David Lazarus of the Los Angeles Times
has verifi ed Weissman’s comments and
further informs his readers that, after
interviewing Weissman himself, that
Trump’s insistence that fewer rules
means more jobs and a more vibrant
economy is not true. What has been
found by looking into this matter on
the effects of regulations is that our
nation is better off when
there are rules that keep
tabs on and exert safety,
health and economic mea-
sures to control corpora-
tions that too often have
gone wild in their pursuit
of profi ts and beyond, that
is, unbridled greed.
What facts surface af-
ter a year of the Trump
administration? Even half
way through the Trump administra-
tion’s fi rst year, the Offi ce of Man-
agement and Budget reported doing
away with or ending for any form
of amendment, 860 regulations hav-
ing to do with consumer and worker
safeguards and environmental pro-
tections. What we’re talking about in
this matter include looser emission
standards for fossil fuels, workplace
safety regulations now gone that pro-
tect against exposure to hazardous
chemicals, and, among so many oth-
ers, elimination of safe drinking water
guarantees.
Recently, Trump installed his super
conservative budget director, Mick
Mulvaney, as interim director of the
Consumer Financial Protection Bu-
gene
h.
mcintyre
Keizertimes
on every other day? Shall we provide
rhetorical cover for alt-right bigots
only on special occasions, such as af-
ter a racist protest and murder?
The point applies in other ar-
eas. While some Republicans have
criticized media bias, Trump has at-
tempted to systematically delegiti-
mize all critical information as “fake
news” and referred to the media as
“the enemy of the people.” While
other politicians have pushed back
against investigations, Trump has at-
tempted to discredit federal law en-
forcement as part of a “deep state”
plot against him.
We have seen similar damage in
the realm of values and norms. In
the cultivation of anger and tribal-
ism. In the use of language to in-
fl ame and demean. In the destruc-
tion of a common factual basis for
politics, making policy compromise
of the kind Olsen favors impossible.
What would fusion with this type
of politics look like? Trump defi nes
loyalty to conservatism as contempt
for many of our neighbors. One
might as well have proposed a fu-
sion between popular sovereignty
and Abraham Lincoln’s conception
of inherent human rights. They were
not a dialectic requiring a synthesis.
They were alternatives demanding a
choice.
Which raises a fourth option: For
elected leaders to remind Americans
who they are and affi rm our com-
mon bonds. For conservative pol-
icy experts to defi ne an agenda of
working-class uplift, not an agenda
of white resentment—which will
consign Republicans to moral squa-
lor and (eventually) to electoral ir-
relevance. For principled conserva-
tives to hear the call of moral duty
and stand up for their beliefs until
this madness passes. As it will.
reau. The CFPB was created to deal
with the reckless corporate behavior
that resulted in the close-call collapse
of the country’s fi nancial-services
and brought on the worst recession
in U.S. history. He, like Energy Sec-
retary Rick Perry, who wants to ter-
minate his department, Ryan Zinke,
who seeks to turn all federal lands and
waters over to oil drilling and private
development, and Scott Pruitt, EPA
administrator, are determined to bring
an end to most of which the average
American has treasured and valued
for 120 years. Incidentally, regarding
Mulvaney and the CFPB, he’s seen to
it that all U.S. credit cards, in lengthy
changes to terms and conditions, no
longer afford the consumer any pro-
tections in the use of his credit cards.
We’ve learned more of late as GOP
members of Congress have gone to
work at “protecting” Americans from
“government interference with com-
petitive, innovative markets.” Just keep
in mind, though, that, in a nation
without any government interfer-
ence, your car may stall on the free-
way due to contaminated gas, access
to your favorite beach or national park
may be prevented because oil drillers
have it barricaded off, your waters be-
come non-potable because fi ltration’s
gone, your food and meat have adul-
terating materials in them because it
has not been inspected and the air you
breathe is cancer-causing most every-
where while deadly in work environ-
ments.
(Gene H. Mczntyre lives in Keizer.)