Page 4A
OPINION
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OTHER VIEWS
Founded October 16, 1875
KATHRYN B. BROWN
DANIEL WATTENBURGER
Publisher
Managing Editor
JENNINE PERKINSON
TIM TRAINOR
Advertising Director
Opinion Page Editor
OUR VIEW
Pope’s call to action goes
beyond the environment
Is it time for a
conversation on
gun violence?
How do we mark time? In
many ways. If we are in the midst
of war, the names and dates of
various battles mark the passage of
time. If we are parents, the dates
of our children’s births become
milestones.
It was striking last week to
hear President Barack Obama
say that the Charleston shootings
that claimed the life of nine black
congregants at a Bible study
meeting was the 14th mass killing
he has responded to during his
presidency. One of those was the
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children and six adults.
The president asked: When will
this nation face its epidemic of gun
violence?
When, indeed?
The most telling answer to the
president’s question was the silence
among Republican presidential
candidates and members of
Congress. The guns issue is
radioactive. It makes cowards
of otherwise outspoken men and
women.
Here in Oregon, we have
been less touched by the large
cataclysms. But one of the ways
we could denote Oregon history
is by what Kip Kinkel did in 1998
at Thurston High School. Kinkel
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there was the Clackamas Town
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two people were killed, though
it was quickly overshadowed by
Sandy Hook three days later.
So how does the gun lobby
answer President Obama’s
question? It says there is never
time for a serious discussion of
gun violence, that emotions are too
high and the culprit is elsewhere.
It’s the mentally ill, lax laws letting
dangerous people out of prison, or
even the victims themselves, for
being opposed to gun control. If
you can believe that.
There is serious literature on
the topic, full of ideas that are not
apocalyptic. A good reference is
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“Private Guns, Public Health.”
Hemenway is one of a group
of public health physicians and
researchers who have approached
gun violence (homicides, accidental
shootings, suicides) as a public
health concern.
The gun lobby was so alarmed
by the statistics gathered by these
physicians that its congressional
allies have prohibited the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention
from keeping track of deaths and
accidents caused by guns. No one
would suggest we remain similarly
ignorant about deaths from
drowning or automobile accidents.
Here is something we can
predict. If Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio
or Rand Paul win the presidency,
they will be asked regularly —
during their four to eight years in
the White House — to comment on
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can mark our calendars.
Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East Oregonian editorial board of Publisher
Kathryn Brown, Managing Editor Daniel Wattenburger, and Opinion Page Editor Tim Trainor.
Other columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions of the authors and not
necessarily that of the East Oregonian.
I
n Pope Francis’ sprawling new
And while it includes hopeful
encyclical, “Laudato Si’,” there
passages, the encyclical’s most pungent
are many mansions: a meditation
lines are apocalyptic: “Doomsday
on biblical ecology, a discussion of
predictions can no longer be met with
environmental policy, a critique of
irony or disdain. We may well be
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leaving to coming generations debris,
perils of social media.
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What everyone wants to know, of
This pungency is what really
course, is whether the pope takes sides
distinguishes “Laudato Si’” from prior
Ross
in our most polarizing debate. And
Douthat papal documents.
he clearly does. After this document,
Francis’ predecessors attempted
Comment
there’s no doubting where Francis
versions of his double pitch — urging
stands in the great argument of our time.
Roman Catholics to recognize
But I don’t mean the argument between
environmental devastation as a manifestation
liberalism and conservatism. I mean the
of the individualism the church has long
argument between dynamists and catastrophists. condemned, while inviting secular readers to
'\QDPLVWVDUHSHRSOHZKRVHHVWFHQWXU\ consider religious alternatives to our present
modernity as a basically successful civilization
way of life. But its urgency, sweep, and
advancing toward a future that’s better than the
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past. They do not deny that problems exist, but
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they believe we can innovate our way through
make both audiences think anew.
them while staying on an ever-richer, ever-
However, its catastrophism also leaves
more-liberated course.
this pope more open to empirical criticism.
Dynamists of the left tend to put their faith
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in technocratic government; dynamists of the
with evidence that the global poor have
right, in the genius of free markets. But both
become steadily less poor under precisely the
assume that modernity is a success story whose world system he decries — a reality that has
best days are ahead.
complicated implications for environmentalism.
Catastrophists, on the other hand, see a
Nor are questions related to population
global civilization that for all its achievements
growth successfully resolved. If resource
is becoming more atomized and balkanized,
constraints are really as severe as the pope
more morally bankrupt, more environmentally
implies, and technological solutions as limited
despoiled. What’s more, they believe that
in power, it isn’t entirely clear how the planet
things cannot go on as they are: that the
can sustain the steadily growing population
trajectory we’re on will end in crisis, disaster,
the Catholic vision of marriage and fecundity
dégringolade.
implies. To credibly make the case that a
Like dynamists, catastrophists can be on
billions-strong human race can keep having
the left or right, stressing different agents
large families, you might need a more, well,
of our imminent demise. But they’re united
dynamist view of the human future than this
in believing that current arrangements are
encyclical contains.
foredoomed, and that only a true revolution can
Finally, it’s possible to believe that climate
save us.
change is happening while doubting that it
This is Pope Francis’ position, and the
makes “the present world system ... certainly
controlling theme of his encyclical. It includes,
unsustainable,” as the pope suggests. Perhaps
as many liberals hoped and certain conservatives we’ll face a series of chronic but manageable
feared, a call to action against climate change,
problems instead; perhaps “radical change” can,
which will no doubt cause Republicans to
in fact, be persistently postponed.
squirm during political campaigns to come.
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But reading “Laudato Si’” simply as a case
neither the dynamist nor the catastrophist
for taking climate change seriously misses
framework.
the depth of its critique — which extends
We might have entered a kind of
to the whole “technological paradigm” of
stagnationist position, a sustainable
our civilization, all the ways (economic and
decadence, in which the issues Pope Francis
cultural) that we live now.
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7KLVLVDGRFXPHQWDOLJQHGZLWKWKHVFLHQWL¿F world-altering boil.
consensus on climate that excoriates the modern
In that case, the deep critique our civilization
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deserves will have to be advanced without the
mistake. It’s a document calling for global
threat of imminent destruction. The arguments
action, even a “new world political authority,”
in “Laudato Si’” will still resonate, but they will
that’s drenched in frank contempt for the
have to be structured around a different peril:
existing global leadership class. It’s a document Not a fear that the particular evils of our age
that urges a rapid move away from fossil fuels
can’t last, but the fear that actually, they can.
while explicitly criticizing the leading avenue
Ŷ
for doing so — a cap-and-trade regime — as
Ross Douthat joined The New York Times as
too “quick and easy,” too compromised by
an Op-Ed columnist in April 2009. Previously,
greed and self-interest, to “allow for the radical
he was a senior editor at the Atlantic and a
change which present circumstances require.”
blogger for theatlantic.com.
YOUR VIEWS
Rural Oregon should
seriously consider secession
Rural Oregonians in general and Eastern
Oregonians in particular are growing
increasingly dismayed by the manner in
which Oregon’s legislature and Oregon’s
urban dwellers have marginalized their
values, demonized their lifestyle, villainized
their resource-based livelihoods, and have
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best. All the while they cover Oregon’s most
fertile and well-watered farm ground with
urban sprawl, gangs, illegal aliens, homeless
camps, welfare tramps, and touchy-feely
politics that add little or no value to rural
lifestyles. Meanwhile Oregon’s rural
residents carve out a resource-based living
on marginal farm ground and the leftovers
of Oregon’s economic growth, infrastructure
and technological innovation.
The Portland metro area is home to 47
percent of Oregon’s voters and covers a mere
3776.41 square miles of Oregon’s 98,466
square miles — that’s less than 4 percent of
its land mass, 3.83 percent to be exact.
Five of Oregon’s 36 counties now
control 100 percent of Oregon’s legislative
activity. None are rural. None are east of the
Cascades. None are outside the Willamette
valley.
It would appear to any rural resident
or outside observer that most of Oregon’s
urbanites view Oregon’s rural residents as
nothing more than third world inhabitants
occupying their weekend and vacation
playgrounds in what they advertise to the
world as Oregon’s unique diversity. The
political diversity in this state is becoming
unpalatable.
Since 1988 Oregon’s urban dwellers have
elected a group of individuals that represent
nothing short of an aristocracy of political
power. They have switched their role in
democracy from servant to lord. These
people have successfully disenfranchised and
subjugated the people occupying everything
not Portland or the Willamette Valley. They
have enacted laws with little or no debate
and no amendments. They have stated they
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are enacted; this is backwards legislative
procedure designed to exclude and silence
opposition, oftentimes with out-of-state
money from East Coast power brokers.
Time for a change. Time to organize.
Time to secede or succumb. Thirty-one
counties need to put an initiative on their
ballot that states: “Should (my) county
secede from the state of Oregon and seek a
more perfect union elsewhere?”
Imagine for a moment Idaho’s western
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state of Oregon shrinking to less than 4,000
square miles of land-locked, river view
property.
Grant Darrow
Elgin
Export-Import Bank must go
The reauthorizing of the Export-Import
Bank, established in 1934, will sunset on
June 30. Originally the Ex-Im Bank was
sold as a way to help American exporters.
Instead it has become the vehicle for
cronyism and corruption.
Supporters of the Ex-Im Bank claim it
is vital for exports, helps small businesses,
and supports tens of thousand jobs. The
reality couldn’t be further from the truth.
Here are some facts which supporters of
the bank seem to ignore:
1. Just three companies (Boeing,
General Electric, and Caterpillar) received
87 percent of loan guarantees from the
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11,000 American small businesses.
3. The vast majority of exporters, 98
percent, do not receive assistance from the
bank.
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jobs, it merely redistributes job across
America.
5. There are 31 corruption and fraud
investigations into the Ex-Im Bank.
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Bank also have massive backlogs of orders,
meaning jobs would not be lost.
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and Russia. State-owned foreign airlines
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8. The companies advocating for
reauthorizing of the Ex-Im Bank have
admitted they do not actually need it.
Eliminating the Ex-Im bank would
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companies to compete on their own merits
rather than being politically connected
to the bank. Representative Greg Walden
should stand up for the little guy and end
corporate welfare by voting against any
reauthorizing of the Export-Import Bank!
LETTERS POLICY
Donald Crawford
Klamath Falls
The East Oregonian welcomes original letters of 400 words or less on public issues
and public policies for publication in the newspaper and on our website. The newspa-
per reserves the right to withhold letters that address concerns about individual ser-
vices and products or letters that infringe on the rights of private citizens. Submitted
letters must be signed by the author and include the city of residence and a daytime
phone number. The phone number will not be published. Unsigned letters will not be
published. Send letters to Managing Editor Daniel Wattenburger, 211 S.E. Byers Ave.
Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@eastoregonian.com.
