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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (March 22, 2017)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Wednesday, March 22, 2017 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 OUR VIEW Drug court closure hurts entire county The shuttering of the Umatilla cell and thinking about what you’ve County Drug Court is a major hit done — is not nearly as effective. As for the health and well-being of this we learned at last year’s drug court county. graduation, the recidivism rate at The program is operated by the the county jail was 20.35 percent, a Community Justice Department decrease of about 10 percent since but funded by a state grant. Those the drug court program started. dollars have been cut by more than That’s significant, as a vast majority a third since 2010 and the county of jail inmates at any given time said it can’t keep are behind bars for backfilling to make offenses stemming The alternative — from drug and up the difference. According to abuse. sitting in a jail cell alcohol Dale Primmer, The program the department’s and thinking about isn’t perfect. There director, the Umatilla are some who don’t what you’ve done complete it because County would have to pay $516,000 in are unwilling — is not nearly they the next biennium to or unmotivated. as effective. keep the court open. There are others who Rather than axing graduate, celebrate elsewhere, like the with friends and day treatment program or the county family, then later return to their jail, commissioners opted to cut their addictions and habits and land on the losses and end the court. That’s a wrong side of the law. shame, though we can’t say we have There are times criminal offenders a better solution. need to be behind bars, and those unwilling to making changes in their The decade-old program is an intense drug and alcohol treatment lives for the safety of those around program for those who have landed them should serve the full sentence on the wrong side of the law. It prescribed by the law. But a better replaces incarceration with group investment is to work on the root sessions and individual counseling, problem that leads to crime, and in requiring regular drug tests and many cases that’s found in addiction. community service. If those terms The next step is unclear. There is are met, graduates of the program still state money available for such are eligible to have criminal charges a program and the county could dismissed. regroup and find a way to put it to The outcry about the program’s use in a responsible way. Oregon voters have said they termination said a lot. People shared would rather see spending cuts than testimonials about the court saving tax increases, and this is what that their life, teaching them how to looks like. Unfortunately, it will move past the burden of addiction likely lead to the higher costs for and poor decisions and give back to jails and prisons while diminishing the community. the quality of life for many families. The alternative — sitting in a jail OTHER VIEWS The unifying American story ne of the things we’ve lost in Niebuhr applied Puritan thinking to this country is our story. It is the America’s mission and warned of the narrative that unites us around a taint of national pride. common multigenerational project, that The Exodus story has many virtues gives an overarching sense of meaning as an organizing national myth. It and purpose to our history. welcomes in each new group and For most of the past 400 years, gives it a template for how it fits into Americans did have an overarching the common move from oppression story. It was the Exodus story. The to dignity. The book of Exodus is David Puritans came to this continent and Brooks full of social justice — care for the felt they were escaping the bondage vulnerable, the equality of all souls. It Comment of their Egypt and building a new emphasizes that the moral and material Jerusalem. journeys are intertwined and that for a The Exodus story has six acts: first, a life of nation to succeed materially, there has to be an slavery and oppression, then the revolt against invisible moral constitution and a fervent effort tyranny, then the difficult flight through the toward character education. howling wilderness, then the infighting and It suggests that history is in the shape misbehavior amid the stresses of that ordeal, of an upward spiral. People who see their then the handing down of a new covenant, a lives defined by Exodus move, innovate and new law, and then finally the organize their lives around arrival into a new promised a common eschatological land and the project of building American history destiny. As Langston Hughes a new Jerusalem. put it, “America is taught less as famously The Puritans could survive never was America to me / a progressively And yet I swear this oath — / hardship because they knew what kind of cosmic drama will be!” realized grand America they were involved in. Being The Exodus narrative has a chosen people with a sacred pretty much been dropped narrative and mission didn’t make them from our civic culture. Schools more as a arrogant, it gave their task cast off the Puritans as a bunch dignity and consequence. of religious fundamentalists. series of power It made them self-critical. Gorski shows how a social- When John Winthrop used the conflicts between science, technocratic mindset phrase “shining city on a hill” triumphed, treating politics oppressor and has he didn’t mean it as self- as just a competition of congratulation. He meant that self-interested utilitarians. oppressed. the whole world was watching Today’s students get steeped and by their selfishness and in American tales of genocide, failings the colonists were screwing it up. slavery, oppression and segregation. American As Philip Gorski writes in his new book, history is taught less as a progressively realized “American Covenant,” which is essential grand narrative and more as a series of power reading for this moment, the Puritans conflicts between oppressor and oppressed. understood they were part of one covenant and The academic left pushed this had ferocious debates about what that covenant reinterpretation, but as usual the extreme meant. right ended up claiming the spoils. The During the revolution, the founding fathers people Gorski calls radical secularists had that fierce urgency too and drew just as expunged biblical categories and patriotic heavily on the Exodus story. Some wanted to celebrations from schools. The voters depict Moses on the Great Seal of the United revolted and elected the people Gorski calls States. Like Moses, America too was rebinding the religious nationalists to the White House itself with a new covenant and a new law. — the jingoistic chauvinists who measure Frederick Douglass embraced the Exodus Americanness by blood and want to create a too. African-Americans, he pointed out, have Fortress America keeping the enemy out. been part of this journey too. “We came We have a lot of crises in this country, but when it was a wilderness …. We leveled your maybe the foundational one is the Telos Crisis, forests; our hands removed the stumps from a crisis of purpose. Many people don’t know the field …. We have been with you … in what this country is here for, and what we are adversity, and by the help of God will be with here for. If you don’t know what your goal is, you in prosperity.” then every setback sends you into cynicism The successive immigrant groups saw and selfishness. themselves performing an exodus to a It should be possible to revive the Exodus promised land. The waves of mobility — from template, to see Americans as a single people east to west, from south to north — were also trekking through a landscape of broken seen as Exodus journeys. These people could institutions. What’s needed is an act of endure every hardship because they were imagination, somebody who can tell us what serving in a spiritual drama and not just a our goal is, and offer an ideal vision of what financial one. the country and the world should be. In the 20th century, Martin Luther King Jr. ■ and other civil rights leaders drew on Exodus David Brooks has been a senior editor at more than any other source. Our 20th-century The Weekly Standard, a contributing editor at presidents made the story global. America Newsweek and the Atlantic Monthly, and he is would lead a global exodus toward democracy currently a commentator on “The Newshour — God was a God of all peoples. Reinhold with Jim Lehrer.” O 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. YOUR VIEWS State needs to focus on the big problems first At what point do we require more from our elected representatives? Oregon is in a dire fix financially with serious issues at hand including the budget deficit, out-of-control spending and an education model that everyone has an excuse for and no one can accept any of the blame. Maybe the statewide leadership could consider a policy that no new bills will make it to the floor for a vote until the obvious big problems above have been addressed. For instance, it would be nice if the Senate and House leadership along with the governor would mandate that any new bill proposed would have to accomplish a verifiable spending reduction and be presented for a vote before any of the “feel good” laws can even be presented. To illustrate my point, you need look no further than Sen. Bill Hansell. He has been actively championing bills that involve driving in the left lane of the freeway, keeping roadkill, warning posters at rest areas, and naming state symbols. What a productive use of state time and resources! He is reminding me of the band director in the movie “Titanic.” He will make sure the band plays on so the passengers are sufficiently distracted from the fact they will shortly be residing at the bottom of the ocean. Is this really the best we can do? What a disappointment! Russ Henslee Pendleton School district should better manage its budget Who wants more taxes? Only the ones who can afford it. What about the ones trying to live on their Social Security money? We don’t get a raise to help pay for things. My taxes raise about $200 each year. Because of these kinds of bonds that pass, if this continues we will need to sell our homes, because we can’t afford these things. Let the school districts live on their budget like we are forced to do. They need to take money out of their sports program. Can you imagine what is spent on this? Wait and see — they will be asking for more next year. Jerry Hoffman Hermiston ‘People Power’ really just anti-Trump I have attended both, so far, town hall meetings sponsored by the American Civil Liberties Union. These two meetings are part of a newly birthed ACLU program called “People Power.” (How could we, people of the Sixties, not like that naming?) The subject on the floor was the cause of the illegal aliens who had come to the attention of law enforcement. A nine-paragraph handout speaks to ACLU’s interpretation of the handling of those persons. A major thrust speaks to the separation of funded agencies: city, county and state, and how they must not be allowed to co-mingle information or actions. ACLU’s People Power advocates agencies not spend even the cost of a phone call of their budget to inform another agency of the situation. This is the creation of the “sanctuary city,” the shutting down of “intel” one agency might share with another. I thought this was part of the criticism of 9/11, the failure of one intel-gathering body to share with another. In this budget challenging time I guess it’s nice to have someone watching the cash register. But that’s not what “people power” is about. It is about obstruction of the Trump administration. Believe it is part of an orchestrated plan by the losing party to obstruct our government — their tantrum is scripted and long-reaching. Our current administration doesn’t like “sanctuary cities?” So, strengthen the support of and increase the number of “sanctuary cities!” Can you believe a judge in Portland directed, or led, an illegal alien to a service-only side door so he could avoid immigration officers waiting for him at the public doorway? On my personal note: Our attention should be on the criminal illegal alien, those persons who do us harm and are a safety concern to our citizens. We have bigger fish to fry than the hard-working, family-oriented immigrant. I want them to get legal and join our village — to make the realizing of the American dream commonplace. I want people’s well being and comfort to be as common as horse turds at Round-Up. Ron Linn Stanfield LETTERS POLICY 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.
