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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 22, 2016)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Thursday, December 22, 2016 OTHER VIEWS Founded October 16, 1875 KATHRYN B. BROWN Publisher DANIEL WATTENBURGER Managing Editor TIM TRAINOR Opinion Page Editor MARISSA WILLIAMS Regional Advertising Director MARCY ROSENBERG Circulation Manager JANNA HEIMGARTNER Business Office Manager MIKE JENSEN Production Manager OTHER VIEWS 10 ways to make more mindful charitable gifts I f you’re a community- 6. Fewer may be better. As the minded person, it’s easy old saying goes, if you’re thirsty, be overwhelmed with it’s better to fill up a few cups solicitations for financial than put one drop in a thousand. support from worthy nonprofit You’ll achieve the greatest return organizations, especially at on your investment with deeper, the end of the year. Being as longer-term commitments, thoughtful and intentional not with a flavor-of-the-month about personal and business approach. And, if you have a Max philanthropy as you are about Williams solid giving strategy in place, it’s your own finances is a step in the much more reasonable to decline Comment right direction. opportunities that don’t fit the Here are some charitable profile. giving ideas I recommend keeping 7. Involve family members and in mind as you delve into your employees. Bring your children, philanthropy this month. And, despite grandchildren or parents into the what bookkeepers or certified public conversation and give them a chance accountants might cheerfully counsel, I to share what is important to them so try to think of the tax deductibility of my they can help guide your giving. Or, own personal gifts as an added bonus, if you are a business owner, let staff not a primary motivation. members give you input on what causes 1. Ask yourself the key questions. and groups are most important to them. What’s a realistic budget for charitable Even owners of micro-businesses often contributions? And, given my current match their employees’ donations up to a and likely future available resources, certain limit. Also, consider creating fun where do I think I can make the greatest and meaningful staff volunteer activities impact? such as a nonprofit facility clean-up or a 2. Don’t wait for organizations (and holiday food drive. causes) to find you. Do some homework 8. Contribute things other than to evaluate the vision and effectiveness money. Time, talent, treasure — of groups you’re considering, then everyone has some of each. Once you’ve connect with them in ways that make identified who you want to support, the most sense. Sometimes, it’s good to constantly inventory what you have to link with organizations that align directly give that matches up best with what’s with your work or your hobbies. That’s needed. In addition to cash, you may why home improvement retailers have want to join a nonprofit’s board or host a supported Habitat for Humanity and get-to-know brunch for potential donors. why tech firm owners give hardware and 9. Think outside the “collection software to schools and colleges. You’ll box.” Many organizations, religious be far more invested in their success if and secular alike, rely on donors who you pick the right partners. commit to making regular contributions. But, every once in a while, it’s good 3. Determine the best sources of to check around and see if there are information. Charity Navigator and emerging groups meeting new and more GuideStar are two readily accessible critical needs. online sources of intelligence about 10. Ask for help when you need it. the structure and performance of If doing all the research and legwork many nonprofit organizations, but they associated with creating and managing don’t evaluate and rate everyone. Ask your charitable giving this year seems trusted experts about what groups are daunting, think about tapping into the really doing the best work on multiple measures: breadth and depth of effective expertise of The Oregon Community Foundation (www.oregoncf.org). It has services, financial management, helped thousands of donors make this leadership, innovation, community community and ones around our state support and involvement, sustainability, great places to live and work. etc. One final thought. Although you 4. Make gifts that satisfy both your may want to use charitable giving to heart and your head. Over time figure out what really inspires you and commit enhance the visibility of your cause, to giving most generously there. The real not all donations need to be publicly key to long-term success and satisfaction acknowledged. Many cultural traditions is to give honestly, not solely for ulterior teach that the most rewarding gifts are made quietly and we have a number of motives. foundation donors who have expressed 5. Leverage your resources. There how much they love seeing themselves are many simple ways to make your money go farther. For example, consider listed as “Anonymous” at the top of the donor list! making a match challenge to other ■ individuals and businesses who care Max Williams is the president about the same things you do. And and CEO of The Oregon Community investigate how “aggregators” such as Foundation. The organization just community foundations can effectively announced $162,000 in grants to pool donor dollars to increase the support the important work of nonprofits number and size of grants, scholarships along the North Coast. and other forms of support. YOUR VIEWS Hands off ag research center Once again the federal government is throwing agriculture under the bus. This year the Pendleton Experiment station has been selected to take a beating. All they do is research dryland food, improve yield of food, identify pests and weeds and design ways to prevent and control them. Maybe the folks in Washington D.C. will recognize the importance of food grown and made in America when their bread comes from the Hanchin Bakery somewhere in China and costs $29 a loaf. Frustrated as usual, Mike Mehren Hermiston LETTERS POLICY The East Oregonian welcomes original letters of 400 words or less on public is- sues and public policies for publication in the newspaper and on our website. The newspaper reserves the right to withhold letters that address concerns about indi- vidual services 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. Books for the Donald Trump era T he Donald Trump presidency is My next recommendation is from not yet officially upon us, but across the Atlantic: “The Abolition of the Trump era has already been Britain” (1999), by Peter Hitchens, good for political reading lists. Book Christopher’s right-wing brother. buyers baffled by Trumpism and Writing early in the Tony Blair era, seeking understanding have turned to Hitchens argued that Britain’s rulers various sociologies of the ur-Trump had broken faith with the island voter, making best sellers out of J.D. nation’s past, burying its history, Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy,” Nancy customs and traditions, subjecting Ross Isenberg’s “White Trash” and Arlie Douthat their people to a misguided European Russell Hochschild’s “Strangers in pseudo-empire, and tolerating social Comment Their Own Land.” decay and disarray as the price of Liberals looking to feed tolerance and progress. Nearly 20 their sense of alarm have been steered years on, you will not find a clearer case toward Hannah Arendt’s “The Origins of against both Blair and David Cameron’s Totalitarianism,” Sinclair Lewis’ “It Can’t shared worldview, or a clearer explanation Happen Here” and Philip Roth’s “Plot for why so many Britons voted for Brexit. Against America.” “What Is Populism?” Then I recommend widening your gaze by German political scientist Jan-Werner to Europe as a whole, through Christopher Mueller has been widely recommended; so Caldwell’s “Reflections on the Revolution has Mark Lilla’s anatomy of reactionary in Europe” (2009), which critiqued the thought, “The Shipwrecked Mind”; so Continent’s rulers for welcoming — out has Richard Rorty’s of idealism, economic “Achieving Our calculation and Country,” from back indifference — an What liberal readers in 1998, mostly for a unprecedented level of prescient few paragraphs need right now are immigration from the on “the nonsuburban world that their not just portraits of the Islamic electorate” and its societies lacked both potential affinity for competence and the Brexit and Trump-vot- the strongmen. The racial civilizational confidence element in Trumpism ing domestic Other, to assimilate. When Caldwell’s has sent people back but a clearer sense of book came out it seemed to W.E.B. Du Bois on “Black Reconstruction” if it described a their own worldview’s as — once they’ve finished, slow-burning, hopefully of course, with the latest manageable social and limits, blind spots, from Ta-Nehisi Coates. religious crisis. Today, But for your blunders and internal in the wake of Angela last-minute Christmas Merkel’s decision to contradictions. shopping, I have some hit the accelerator on slightly different demographic change, recommendations to the book’s mordant tone make. The Trump-era reading lists I’ve seen seems, if anything, too optimistic. include many worthy titles, but they also Which is why my next recommendations tend to focus heavily on the dark forces are a few shades darker: First “Submission” lurking somewhere outside enlightened (2015), Michel Houellebecq’s seemingly circles — in the hills of Appalachia, in the dystopian novel about an exhausted near- postindustrial heartland, in the souls of future France that ends up choosing between racists and chauvinists and crypto-fascists. Islamism and fascism (it picks the veil), and They are anthropologies of populism, then one of Houellebecq’s earlier novels, cautionary tales from history, blueprints for “The Elementary Particles,” whose portrait blunting revanchism’s appeal. But they do of a loveless, sex-fixated and disposable not generally subject Western liberalism modern masculinity reveals that its author itself to rigorous critique. believes the real dystopia is already And that might be what liberal readers here — that the end of history is actually a need right now: Not just portraits of the materially comfortable desert, from which Brexit and Trump-voting domestic Other, the political and religious extremisms but a clearer sense of their own worldview’s of “Submission” offer a welcome and limits, blind spots, blunders and internal rehumanizing form of escape. contradictions. This is itself an extreme idea, of course, So my reading list starts with two of and so is the comparison offered in my liberalism’s sharpest internal critics, both final recommendation, Ryszard Legutko’s deceased — a reactionary of the left, “Demon In Democracy” (2015), in which Christopher Lasch, and a conservative the author, a Polish political philosopher, liberal, Samuel P. Huntington. Their explicitly links the ideological conformism most-cited works, Lasch’s “Culture of and faith in capital-P Progress of Narcissism” and Huntington’s “Clash of contemporary liberalism to the oppressive Civilizations and the Remaking of World communism of his youth. Order,” have obvious applications for our Legutko is a member of Law and Justice, culture and politics today. But the books I the right-wing party currently ruling Poland, would recommend are a little different. whose ascent has provoked the Western For Lasch, it’s “The Revolt of the Elites media to panic over its religious nationalism and the Betrayal of Democracy” (1995), and illiberal forays. Which is all the more a polemic against the professional upper reason to read him, and to see through his class’ withdrawal from the society it eyes (and not only his) how the open society as envisioned by contemporary progressives rules and a critique of the ways in which can seem to conservatives like a closed and multiculturalism and meritocracy erode stifling one — closed to transcendence, patriotism and democracy. For Huntington, closed to memory, closed to the pre-liberal it’s “Who Are We? The Challenges to traditions upon which Legutko (and most of American National Identity” (2004), a book the writers I’ve just recommended) would widely denounced as racist for arguing argue the liberal democratic order actually that the recent wave of Latin-American depends. immigration might not be easily assimilable Liberal readers probably will not finish and might instead balkanize the country into “Demon” ready to vote for Law and Justice; identitarian redoubts. Houellebecq probably won’t convince them Both books are imperfect: Lasch’s is too angry, Huntington’s too pessimistic (I think). that our civilization’s choice is porn and cloning or the caliphate; Hitchens probably But in different ways they both offer, in won’t persuade them to become Brexiteers. Lasch’s words, a “revisionist interpretation But even for the unconvinced, reading of American history, one that stresses the these writers will go a long way toward degree to which liberal democracy has explaining the most unexpected thing about lived off the borrowed capital of moral Western politics in the strange year of and religious traditions antedating the rise 2016 — the sheer number of people in our of liberalism.” And they illustrate how prosperous, at-peace societies who don’t the Western elite has burned the candle seem to want to live in liberalism’s end of of solidarity at both ends — welcoming history anymore. migration that transforms society from ■ below even as the upper class floats up into Ross Douthat, the previous senior editor a post-national utopia, which remains an at The Atlantic, joined The New York Times undiscovered country for the people left as an Op-Ed columnist in 2009. behind.
