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OPINION
East Oregonian
Friday, September 15, 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
Tip of the hat;
kick in the pants
A tip of the hat to the hundreds upon hundreds of volunteers in
Pendleton, each of whom help make
Round-Up Week everything it is.
That includes everyone who volunteers
with the Round-Up itself, but the many
others who give of their time at Happy
Canyon, Main Street or the Indian Village,
at parades and dinners and fundraisers near
and far and all-year round. We also thank
those who open their homes and hearts to
help house the visitors that overwhelm our
small town for one week each year.
It takes a village of 17,000 to put on this
rodeo and everything that accompanies it. We tip our hat to all who help and
contribute in their own way.
A kick in the pants to the dopey Portland protesters who were
marching around their city last
weekend, a few of whom were toting
a Soviet flag.
From a town that has gone though its
flag related issues — the Main Street
Cowboys decided at the last minute to
dis-invite a controversial Confederate
flag vendor from its Main Street fun
during Round-Up — we must kick the
big city protesters for their own cultural
faux pas.
There is no difference between
parading around town with a Confederate flag or a Soviet one.
Both are failed states, brutally cruel regimes, and those marching
behind their colors show equal amounts of historical ignorance, disdain for
intellectual freedom and the sanctity of human life.
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
Confederate flag clearly
represents slavery
Donald Lien’s Sept. 6 letter
oversimplified the symbolism of the
Confederate flag so egregiously that I
feel compelled to correct his ahistorical
claim that the flag at issue does not
represent slavery or white supremacy.
While Lien correctly observes
that what is commonly referred to
as the “Confederate flag” was never
officially adopted as the official flag of
the Confederacy, the “stars and bars”
were placed in the upper left hand
corner of the official flag of the C.S.A.
when they first officially adopted a
“national” flag in 1863. It was a part of
the official flag of the Confederacy. It
has since been popularly adopted and
come to symbolize the C.S.A. and, by
implication, the causes for which that
pseudo-nation stood.
Lien also correctly wrote that the
southern states (self-identified in
1860-1861 as the “slaveholding states”)
seceded, which led to the Civil War. His
analysis conveniently fails to identify
the causes for secession. Allow the
slaveholding states to fill this gap in
their own words, as stated at the time of
secession.
Several Confederate states provided
contemporaneous justification for their
secession. In their document entitled
“A Declaration of the Immediate
Causes which Induce and Justify the
Secession of the State of Mississippi
from the Federal Union,” Mississippi
unequivocally identifies slavery as the
basis for their separation from the Union.
“Our position is thoroughly identified
with the institution of slavery — the
greatest material interest of the world.”
South Carolina similarly identified the
“increasing hostility on the part of the
non-slaveholding States to the institution
of slavery” as their primary basis for
secession.
Any reasonable dispute about whether
slavery was the primary cause for the
Civil War is put to rest by the speeches
given at the secession conventions and
the “Declaration of Causes” statements
issued at the time of secession. Given
this proper historical context, to then
argue that the contemporary symbol
of the Confederacy does not represent
slavery or white supremacy is a factually
untenable proposition. Lien very simply
argues that the lack of slave-related
imagery on the flag itself means that it
does not represent slavery, hatred, or
white supremacy.
This is comparable to arguing
that the Nazi flag does not speak to
Holocaust atrocities because it does not
contain Jewish imagery. Both claims
are ridiculous. The decision to reject
the vendor who chooses to sell the
Confederate flag was the morally correct
choice.
Micah Johnstone
Pendleton
Thorne a good choice for
Westward Ho! marshal
Seems to me that the selection of
the controversial Mike Thorne as grand
marshal of the Westward Ho! Parade is
worth comment. He has been a key figure
on the northeast Oregon scene since the
1960s, and his political skills have both
solved problems and rankled those who
have felt stung by the wheat rancher’s
strong focus and analytical approach to
issues.
Mike and Jill Thorne have tackled
a long list of Pendleton problems and
needs. Their influence has been felt
through reinvigorating downtown
buildings and tourism numbers and
through effective teamwork at the
Chamber of Commerce and Downtown
Association. The Thornes have been
relentless in pursuing Pendleton
improvements. They have been all-in
but with separate styles — he favoring
a one-on-one approach and she
summoning as many troops as possible.
Mike Thorne is a natural economic
development talent. In watching him
from the journalistic sidelines, I’ve
felt that Mike seems to have known
instinctively that the best first step when
you are under the gun is to feed your
strongest assets and look for more of
them. Other practices I have noticed:
Look at a situation objectively, learn from
others as you go from job to job..And
when you see an organization struggling,
include the secretaries, the assistants
and the line workers when you ask staff
members what changes they would like.
A list of accomplishments under
Mike’s name would include replacing
Eastern Oregon Mental Hospital with
EOCI, persuading the Krustez mill
(Newly Wed Foods) to build in Pendleton
and shepherding the Round-Up
Centennial grandstand project on time
and under budget, and improving the
quality of management decisions at the
Port of Portland.
Thomas Vaughan, director of the
Oregon Historical Society a few decades
ago, was known as one of the best
politicians — persuading people to a
common end — in Oregon. He used to
say, “Make no small plans.” Once you
have confidence in your judgment, go
for it.
There is plenty of room for discussion
on the record of Mike Thorne. When it
comes to a person who has been in the
public eye as long as he has and with his
laser focus, there are lots of witnesses
and as much criticism as praise. But I
think there is probably more agreement
on the assertion that Mike Thorne has
been one of the best politicians we have
had.
I thank Mike and Jill Thorne for
the effort they have put into Pendleton
improvements. It’s great to be on the
same team with them.
Mike Forrester
Pendleton
OTHER VIEWS
Liberalism and the
campus rape tribunals
L
ast week Betsy DeVos,
unicorns, that alleged victims almost
the secretary of education,
never lied or exaggerated or made
announced that the Trump White
mistakes of memory and judgment.
House would be revising the Obama
Reasonable center-left types argued
administration guidelines for how
that broadening rape’s definitions
colleges and universities adjudicate
and weakening men’s rights could
accusations of sexual assault.
instill a necessary sort of fear, a kind
There were protests outside her
of balance of terror between male
speech and spittle-flecked rants on
sexual privilege and a female right to
Ross
Twitter, but overall the reaction
Douthat accuse and be believed. A few of my
felt relatively muted, at least by the
fellow social conservatives agreed:
Comment
standards of reactions to anything
If unreasonable rules and unfair
Trump-related or DeVos-driven.
proceedings discouraged men from
Perhaps this was because enough people
pursuing promiscuity and treating women
read The Atlantic, which chose last week
badly, so much the better for both the women
to run a three-part series by Emily Yoffe on
and the men.
the sexual-assault policies in question. The
None of these defenses looked persuasive
series demonstrated exhaustively what anyone once the new order took hold. False rape
paying close attention already knew: The
accusations are rare in many contexts, yes,
legal and administrative
but bad systems generate
response to campus rape
bad cases, and a system
over the past five years has
designed to assume the guilt
been a kind of judicial and
of the accused has clearly
bureaucratic madness, a
encouraged dubious charges
cautionary tale about how
and clouds of suspicion
swiftly moral outrage and
and pre-emptive penalties
political pressure can lead
unjustly applied.
to kangaroo courts and star
Meanwhile any balance
chambers, in which bias
of terror, as Yoffe points out
and bad science create an
in the third installment of
unshakable presumption of
her series, has turned out to
guilt for the accused.
be racial as well as sexual,
It’s also a cautionary tale
since it is a not-much-
with specific implications
talked-about truth that
for cultural liberalism,
minority students seem to be
because it demonstrates
accused of rape well out of
how easily an ideology
proportion to their numbers
founded on the pursuit of
on campus. So setting out to
perfect personal freedom
strengthen women’s power
can end up generating a
relative to men has created
new kind of police state, how quickly the rule
a cycle of accusation and punishment whose
of pleasure gives way to the rule of secret
injustices probably fall disproportionately on
tribunals and Title IX administrators (of which black men.
Harvard, Yoffe notes in passing, now has 55
As for whether the unjust system might
on staff), and how making libertinism safe for
nonetheless have some sort of remoralizing
consenting semi-adults requires the evacuation effect on male sexual behavior, I stand by
of due process.
what I argued a few years ago. Offering young
Rape and sexual assault are age-old
men broad sexual license regulated only by a
problems. But the particular problem on
manifestly unfair disciplinary system imbued
college campuses these days is a relatively
with the rhetoric of feminism seems more
new one. For ideological reasons, the modern
likely to encourage a toxic male persecution
complex, a misogynistic masculine reaction,
liberal campus rejects all the old ways in
than any renewed moral conservatism or
which a large population of hormonal young
rediscovered chivalry.
people once would have had their impulses
Or to put it in the lingo of our time: That’s
channeled and restrained — single-sex dorms,
how you get Trump.
“parietal” rules for male-female contact
Having gotten him, liberals lately have
late at night, a general code emphasizing
been arguing that any madness or folly or
sexual restraint. Meanwhile for commercial
ideological mania on their own side pales in
reasons as well as liberationist ones, many
comparison with the extremism at work in
colleges compete for students (especially
Trump-era conservatism. This argument has
the well-heeled, full-tuition-paying sort) by
force: With Trump in the White House the
winkingly promising them not just a lack of
adult supervision but also a culture of constant know-nothing side of the right has much more
partying, an outright bacchanal.
direct political power at the moment than the
This combination, the academic gods of
commissars of liberalism.
sex and money, has given us the twilit (or
But it is also important to recognize that the
strobe-lit) scene in which many alleged sexual folly of the campus rape tribunals is not just an
assaults take place — a world in which both
extremism isolated in the peculiar hothouse of
parties are frequently hammered because
the liberal academy.
their entire social scene is organized around
The abandonment of due process on
drinking your way to the loss of inhibitions
campus was encouraged by activists and
required for hooking up.
accepted by administrators, yes, but it was the
It’s a social world, just as anti-rape activists actual work of the Obama White House — an
and feminists have argued, that offers an
expression of what a liberalism enthroned
in our executive branch and vested with the
excellent hunting ground for predators and
powers of the federal bureaucracy believed
a realm where far too many straightforward
would defend the sexual revolution and serve
assaults take place. But it’s also a zone in
the common good.
which it is very hard for anyone — including
It wasn’t a policy from the liberal fringe,
the young women and young men involved
in other words. It was liberalism, period, as
— to figure out what distinguishes a real
assault from a bad or gross or swiftly regretted it actually exists today and governed from
the White House until very recently. And
consensual encounter.
any reader of The Atlantic who experiences
This reality made many colleges
shamefully loath to deal with rape accusations a certain shock at what has been effectively
imposed on college campuses in the name
at all. But once that reluctance became a
public scandal, the political and administrative of equality and social justice will also be
response was not to rethink the libertinism but experiencing a moment of solidarity with
all of those Americans who prefer not to
to expand the definition of assault, abandon
be governed by this liberalism, and voted
anything resembling due process and build a
accordingly last fall.
system all-but-guaranteed to frequently expel
■
and discipline the innocent.
Ross Douthat joined The New York
A few years ago the injustice of this
Times as an Op-Ed columnist in April 2009.
approach was defended on various grounds.
Previously, he was a senior editor at the
Anti-rape activists suggested that false
Atlantic and a blogger for theatlantic.com.
accusations of sexual assault were as rare as
It demonstrates
how easily
an ideology
founded on
the pursuit of
perfect personal
freedom can end
up generating
a new kind of
police state.
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 newspaper
reserves the right to withhold letters that address concerns about individual 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.