4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2018
editor@dailyastorian.com
KARI BORGEN
Publisher
JIM VAN NOSTRAND
Editor
Founded in 1873
JEREMY FELDMAN
Circulation Manager
DEBRA BLOOM
Business Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN
Production Manager
CARL EARL
Systems Manager
OUR VIEW
Billy Graham set his own baseline
T
he death Wednesday of Billy Graham inev-
itably drew instant tributes from all over
the world.
Perhaps no single figure has been on the
national stage for so long with a consistent mes-
sage: do good and love one another.
The 99-year-old evangelist, crippled by
Parkinson’s disease, and losing his sight and hear-
ing, was a bastion of respectable morality during
an era where the involvement of religion in poli-
tics became more marked and more shrill.
In his early days, Graham paved the way for
Christian ministry to enter the television era, had a
newspaper advice column and wrote more than 30
books on morality that laid the baseline for ethical
behavior for generations throughout the world.
He was showered with accolades from unex-
pected quarters. As well as honorary degrees and
presidential and Congressional medals, he has a
star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and earned
an honorary knighthood from Britain’s Queen
Elizabeth II.
He traveled the world hosting emotional reviv-
als, sharing his perspective on the Christian gos-
pel and offering millions “hope for the troubled
heart,” which was one of his book titles. At the
height of his prominence, he officiated presidential
funerals for Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon.
Most notably in recent years, he helped the nation
mourn after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
His Stone Age views on the role of women
have been widely dissected and quite rightly
criticized.
He managed to stay aloof from the televan-
gelist sex and money scandals of the 1970s and
1980s, and unlike his more extreme firebrand son,
Franklin, did not embrace the rigid intolerance of
some facets of today’s Christian right wing.
What’s sometimes forgotten about Graham,
however, is his outspoken courage in calling on
Americans to tear down racial barriers, beginning
way back in the 1950s. Although he and Martin
Luther King Jr. differed radically in their approach
to the Vietnam War, their lives criss-crossed
repeatedly at the height of the civil rights move-
ment; Graham once even bailed King out of jail.
Graham, originally a Democrat, was an adviser
to presidents, beginning with Truman and moving
into the modern era. Staunch in his Protestantism,
he shared mistrust about Kennedy’s Catholicism,
but years later was flexible enough to embrace
Mitt Romney’s aspirations for high office and put
aside an earlier view that the Mormon religion
was a “cult.” Critics have suggested some hypoc-
risy over Graham’s loud public support for Israel
when declassified portions of taped conversations
with Nixon revealed appalling comments about
the power of Jews in America, especially in media
ownership.
However, people from across the political
spectrum have long admired Graham’s consis-
tent beliefs and the need for everyone to “love thy
neighbor.”
He was a product of his time, as devout in his
hatred for Communism as he was strong in his
Christian beliefs. However history remembers
him, we likely will not see his kind again.
The certainty of Graham’s faith is reflected in
his often-quoted comment: “Someday, you will
read or hear that Billy Graham is dead. Don’t you
believe a word of it. I shall be more alive than I
am now. I will just have changed my address.”
Associated Press
American troops in Vietnam greet evangelist Billy Graham during his 1966 Christmas visit.
Associated Press
The White House, Pete Souza
President Barack Obama meets in 2010 with Graham, 91, at his
mountainside home in Montreat, N.C.
Evangelist Graham, right, talks
with President Dwight Eisen-
hower during a visit at the White
House in 1957.
Associated Press
AP Photo/LM Otero
Rev. Graham speaks in 2002 in Irving, Texas.
Evangelist Graham and President Nixon in 1971 at
ceremonies honoring Graham in Charlotte, N.C.
‘However history
remembers him,
we likely
will not
see his
kind
again.’
Evangelist
Graham
in 1960
in Accra,
Ghana.
AP Photo/
Royale
Gun massacres have become America’s Rorschach test
A
Eugene woman I know is an avid duck
hunter. In fact, hunting and fishing
drew her to the man who would
become her husband. Last Friday this mother
of two sent a message to her friends with “a
simple plea.” She urged that they call the NRA
to cancel their membership.
“Tell them you are breaking up with them,
and tell them you no longer
support policies that are lead-
ing to mass shootings of chil-
dren,” she said. “Then, take
that money that would have
gone to the NRA, and pledge
it instead to Every Town for
STEVE
Gun Safety or Sandy Hook
FORRESTER
Promise or Giffords.org.”
She added: “I’m not
asking you to stop hunting or to get rid of your
handguns. But I ask you to imagine your own
child (or grandkid, niece, nephew, or neighbor),
happily walking into school…and being shot by
someone who definitely should not have a gun.”
Some 25 years ago, Columbia Forum
brought Dr. Linda Erwin of Legacy Emanuel
Hospital here. A trauma surgeon, Dr. Erwin
spoke eloquently and emotionally that night at
Fort Clatsop about what it’s like to treat gunshot
wounds. She’s become a leader in what might
be called the physician resistance to the busi-
ness-as-usual tolerance of gun violence.
The first step in moving beyond ignoring
an epidemic that takes some 30,000 American
lives per year is realizing that it doesn’t have
to be this way. The state of Connecticut took
that step in 2012, following the Sandy Hook
massacre. Writing in The New York Times on
Sunday, Lisa W. Foderaro and Kristin Hussey
report that gun woundings and killings have
declined in states that impose controls on gun
sales.
“Analyses by the Giffords Law Center to
Prevent Gun Violence show that states with
the strictest gun-control measures, including
California, Connecticut, New Jersey and New
York, have the lowest rates of gun deaths, while
those with the most lax laws like Alabama,
Alaska and Louisiana, have the highest,” report
Foderaro and Hussey.
When it comes to massacres such as last
week’s in Florida or the prior one in Las Vegas,
the military-grade weapons at the heart of those
maelstroms have nothing to do with hunting or
target shooting. Assault weapons are designed
to kill humans with efficiency in battle. Why
would it be a good idea to allow sales of such
weapons to anybody with a credit card and a
mailing address?
Dr. Erwin and others, such as David
Hemenway of the Harvard School of Public
Health, argue that gun woundings, killings and
suicides are a public health challenge. In other
words, if a disease were taking this many lives
annually, medical researchers would fashion
a response. For some years, the Centers for
Disease Control gathered statistics on gun
woundings, killings and suicides — until the
National Rifle Association compelled a compli-
ant Congress to forbid the CDC from collecting
and reporting those numbers.
That repudiation of health care logic sum-
marizes what the NRA, through its surrogates
in Congress, is asking us to do — be willfully
ignorant of essential information.
The public health physicians are right in
their approach to gun violence. But also in the
balance is the health of our own psyche.
These gun massacres have become
America’s Rorschach test.
Fareed Zakaria of CNN on Sunday noted
that other nations have as much mental illness
as ours, but they don’t have the epidemic of gun
massacres.
As Maureen Dowd wrote in a column in
The New York Times, America may be in the
throes of great disruptions and anxieties, but
it doesn’t take any soul searching to know
that “treating children as collateral damage is
intolerable.”
Steve Forrester, the former editor and pub-
lisher of The Daily Astorian, is the president and
CEO of EO Media Group.