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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (June 30, 2018)
Page 4A East Oregonian Saturday, June 30, 2018 CHRISTOPHER RUSH Publisher KATHRYN B. BROWN Owner DANIEL WATTENBURGER Managing Editor TIM TRAINOR Opinion Page Editor Founded October 16, 1875 OUR VIEW Discovering new places, seeking out backroads W henever I’ve had the pleasure of moving to a new town, I’ve always tried to be very receptive to the good advice offered by folks who have lived there for awhile and know the ways and customs of their community. That is certainly true of my first few weeks here in northeast Oregon. I relocated here in May after spending three years on the west (and wetter) side of the state in Coos Bay/North Bend. Prior to that, my 26-year newspaper career has taken my family to small cities like Bentonville, Ark., Aberdeen, Wash., and Bartlesville, Okla. Although dramatically different in climate, culture and economic fortunes, each of the communities in which I have lived and worked shared something in common: They are all fiercely proud of their unique heritage and the niche they occupy in the world. I have discovered this to be true here in northeast Oregon as well. In the brief time I have been here, I’ve had the opportunity to visit numerous towns in the region: Pendleton, Hermiston, Stanfield, Umatilla, Echo, Milton-Freewater, Athena, Weston, Tollgate, Elgin, Wallowa, Lostine, Enterprise, Joseph, Pilot Rock, County, Kansas. Further down the Ukiah, Long Creek, Mount Vernon, road, the tourist town of Joseph, John Day and La Grande. I still have originally named Silver Lake or Irrigon, Boardman, Helix, Heppner, Lake City, eventually adopted its Lexington, Baker City and other name for the legendary chief of the towns on my to-visit list. Nez Perce. Each community usually hangs In Grant County, John Day its proverbial hat on something takes its name for a member of the Chris that sets it apart. For instance, I famous 1811 Astor Expedition. A Rush now know that watermelons play renowned hunter and fur trapper, Comment an important part of Hermiston’s his name is well remembered in the branding identity: “Where life is state as it is attached to multiple sweet.” river branches in Oregon as well as the John Of course, everyone identifies Pendleton Day Fossil Beds National Monument. with a bronc-riding — “Let ‘er Buck” — But perhaps my favorite name so far is cowboy image, but as Mayor John Turner the quaint hamlet of Echo, “Where History pointed out to me recently, the actual city Blooms.” It was named by one of the seal honors the city’s woolen products town’s founding fathers, J. H. Koontz, for heritage with an image of a sheep. his then three-year-old daughter in 1880. I see that the hamlet of Athena honors Her Victorian image, as an adult, still its 19th-century Scottish settlers with the adorns the city’s signage and marketing annual Caledonian Games “to preserve materials. and perpetuate Scottish social manners and But beyond the cities and towns, it is customs.” The event is scheduled for July clear to me that the land of Eastern Oregon 13-15 this year, by the way. is a special place. I’ve taken the opportunity According to Wikipedia, Wallowa on weekends to steer my four-wheel drive County’s Lostine was named after a short- down some unpaved and unmarked roads in lived place by the same name in Cherokee the beautiful Blue Mountains that surround us. The views from a mountain meadow at 4,000 feet in elevation can be breathtaking. Most recently, I discovered the joy of taking the slow route from Deadman Pass down Cabbage Hill via the narrow and winding Poverty Flat Road (now, there’s some interesting names for you!). If you’re not in a hurry and the weather is clear, I highly recommend it. Once down the mountain and back onto the gently rolling plains of golden wheat fields, the drive through the Umatilla Indian Reservation is enlightening. The Confederated Tribes are doing some extraordinary things with their facilities and services. And I truly believe I’m getting closer every day to the correct pronunciation of “Tamastslikt.” It’s clear that we live in an incredibly rich and diverse area and I can’t wait to continue my education and exploration here. Here’s to a safe and happy Independence Day holiday to everyone! ■ Chris Rush is regional publisher of the East Oregonian, Hermiston Herald, Wal- lowa County Chieftain and Blue Mountain Eagle newspapers. OTHER VIEWS Anthony Kennedy and the privatization of meaning A YOUR VIEWS Rep. Greg Walden has led his flock astray This week Greg Walden sent me a letter to tell me how he was instrumental is passing the Federal Right to Try Act. Forgive my skepticism for thinking your actions were more motivated by your Big Pharma donors rather than your compassion. You compound the irony by quoting the Bible and parable of the lost sheep and telling me that every opportunity to save a life matters. Where are you now when children are being used as pawns in a manipulated crisis at our borders? A refugee crisis has become a humanitarian crisis. As Walden tells me, the shepherd cares about every one of us. Those people fleeing violence in Guatemala are us. Trump and Fox News would have you believe they are all criminals. How soon we forget that we are a nation of refugees and immigrants. How soon we forget the shameful past of Japanese-American internment and turning away Jewish refugees in World War II. The blatant hypocrisy of a President whose grandfather, mother, and wives are all immigrants and refugees. “What would Jesus do?” still holds up pretty well as a test for right and wrong. I am not a churchgoer, but having been raised with what I assumed were universal Christian values, I continue to try and live my life according to those teachings. What has happened to us? When did we stop being the good guys? Every day Trump attacks our core values, our institutions, our allies and anyone who dares to disagree with him. His petty attacks are not based on fact but are slimy and vulgar attacks on the person. He repeats lie after lie until we are numb to it. For those who say everybody does it, there is simply no comparison or moral equivalent for the sheer volume of his lies and attacks. He has turned the Republicans into a party of grievance and revenge. I hear no pushback when he says things daily that if uttered by a Democrat would cause an insurrection. Winning an election or stacking the Supreme Court with conservatives seems to be worth any Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East Oregonian editorial board. Other columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions of the authors and not necessarily that of the East Oregonian. degradation or adherence to societal norms. If we inflict unnecessary suffering on others in our quest, we can turn away and blame the victims. Sadly, I feel evangelical conservatives in particular have lost the argument for the type of society they say they want. And at what price to their spiritual souls? At what price to our nation? Somewhere, Greg Walden, we have become the sheep that have lost their way. Anita Burrows Pendleton Rep. Walden serves, supports military veterans I recently heard an ad via an internet news link that is grossly inaccurate. “News” such as this sickens me. I ask the veteran whose voice is on the radio ad to do better research before attacking our representative. I too am a veteran and proud of it, and my integrity is important to me. You say Greg Walden voted against the Clay Hunt SAV Act. The truth is he voted for it. Twice. The second time it became law. You say he has done nothing to help veter- ans, but he led the fight in Congress to end veteran homelessness. He has fought for the Homeless Veterans Reintegration Program, leading the effort to increase funding for it each year until this year — when he suc- ceeded in receiving full funding for this pro- gram for the first time in its history. Under his leadership the VA has seen more funding than ever before, and he fought to bring technology and practices most doctors outside the VA use to help veteran care become more effective and efficient. Sir, as a veteran, we must hold ourselves to higher standards. I have met with Con- gressman Walden in his D.C. office, at town hall meetings, and emailed him for support. His response? He continues to support vet- erans and currently serving military person- nel. Check his voting record. You will see he is a very strong supporter for all veterans in our great state. John Wrinkle Redmond merica’s founders certainly of existence, of meaning, of the believed in individual universe, and of the mystery of liberty, but they believed human life.” that liberty happens within a Wow! That requires a lot of background reading. If your name is shared community. They began the Aristotle or Nietzsche, maybe you Constitution with the phrase, “We can do it, but for the rest of us it’s the People.” We are all one thing — going to be tough. We’re busy! a people, a nation, a collective. You wind up with a society That people shares a moral order David — rules that are true for all people Brooks in which the schools, the public Comment culture, even the parents say: It’s not in all times and that govern us in our our job to instill a shared morality freedom. Among them, for example, and worldview from scratch. That’s is the idea that all people are created something you have to do on your own. equal. That people shares a common enterprise. The practical result, given this impossible task, is that most people wind up without We are a self-governing nation, and we all a moral vocabulary, with only scattered play a role in that enterprise by fulfilling shards of values, with no firm foundations the roles that define us — father, mother, for when times get tough. neighbor, citizen and legislator. We are Moreover, we’re much more problematic parts of a covenant and pass down our creatures than Kennedy’s sentence seems to shared order to our posterity. acknowledge. The old philosophers realized Over the decades, that sense of we-ness that the first threat to liberty is actually began to turn into a sense of I-ness the tyranny of our own desires. People or you-ness. You can see it in today’s get enchained to alcohol, commencement clichés: to drugs, to empty calories. Follow your passion, march They get enchained by their to the beat of your own own selfishness, vanity and drummer, listen to your own greed. heart, you do you. Most of us require Justice Anthony Kennedy communal patterns and didn’t invent the shift from shared cultural norms and community to autonomy, certain enforced guardrails but in 1992 he articulated to help us restrain our desires it more crisply than anyone and keep us free. else: “At the heart of liberty Which leads to the is the right to define one’s third big problem with the own concept of existence, “mystery of life” passage. You’d think it of meaning, of the universe, and of the would lead to a very small state that would mystery of human life.” leave a lot of freedom for people. In fact, In this sentence, which became famous as the “mystery of life” passage, there is no it leads to a big, intrusive state. If you strip away all the communal commitments that sense that individuals are embedded in a help people govern themselves from within, social order. There is no acknowledgment then very soon you find you have to pass all of the parts of ourselves that we don’t sorts of laws to govern them from without. choose but inherit — family, race, social If you privatize meaning so that people get roles, historical legacies of oppression, our to follow their unrestrained desires, they bodies, the habits that are handed down to immediately start tramping on one another, us by our common culture. and public pressure grows for restrictive There’s no we. We are all monads who laws, like hate speech regulation, to keep walk around with our own individual things from getting out of control. opinions about existence, meaning and Any society has to perform at least two the universe. Each person is a self-created big related tasks — raising the young and choosing individual, pursuing individual desires. There is no sense that we are part of pursuing of the good. It takes a village a common flow connecting the past, present to do both these things. As Yuval Levin reminded us in an essay in First Things and future; instead, each of us creates our a few years ago, people are only capable own worldview anew. of exercising responsible freedom when The first problem with this definition of they are embedded in and formed by social freedom is that it pushes society toward a institutions — like family, schools that take tepid relativism. There are no truths, only morality seriously and a shared civic order. “concepts.” You define your concept of It’s not a do-it-yourself job. the meaning of the universe, and I define The autonomy ethos forgets this. mine, and who are any of us to judge, Kennedy channeled it in its purest form. let alone impinge upon, that of another? ■ Furthermore, it’s a short road from getting David Brooks became a New York Times to define your own truth to getting to define Op-Ed columnist in September 2003. He your own facts. has been a senior editor at The Weekly Stan- The second problem is that Professor dard, a contributing editor at Newsweek Kennedy gives us a homework assignment and the Atlantic Monthly, and is currently a that almost none of us can actually fulfill. commentator on PBS. Each of us has to define our own “concept A sense of we-ness began to turn into a sense of I-ness 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. 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.
