THURSDAY, MARCH 25, 2021
Baker City, Oregon
4A
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EDITORIAL
Ease the
burden on
businesses
Many businesses in Baker County and elsewhere
in Oregon have suffered from incessant uncertainty
for more than a year due to the pandemic, and it’s
time for Gov. Kate Brown to relieve some of that
onerous burden.
The governor needs to replace, or at least to
change, the two-week COVID-19 risk level system
that’s been in place for almost four months.
Mark Bennett, a Baker County commissioner, said
problems with the system are a common topic when
he talks with business owners. Most notably, because
risk levels can change every two weeks — and poten-
tially change dramatically — business owners can’t
reasonably predict such basic, and crucial, elements
as how many employees they’ll need to schedule, and
the volume of supplies they’ll need to order. This is
particularly problematic for restaurants, which use
so many perishable items.
Baker County’s COVID-19 trends over the past
two months don’t justify the two-week system. Since
mid-January the county’s rate of new cases has been
well below what it was during November and De-
cember, and the general trend has been downward.
After recording 196 new cases during December,
an average of 6.3 cases per day, Baker County’s
numbers have dropped to 106 cases in January (3.4
per day) and to 70 cases in February (2.5 per day).
Through 22 days in March, the rate was 1.9 cases
per day.
Fortunately, since Feb. 12 the county has been in
either the lowest or the second-lowest of the four-
level risk system, meaning businesses have been
subject to less-stringent restrictions than for counties
in the high or extreme category.
Yet as Bennett points out, a single large outbreak
in a care facility or workplace could move the county
into either of those categories, even though such an
isolated situation wouldn’t refl ect a signifi cant risk
of the virus spreading in the community. Outbreaks
at Settler’s Park and at Behlen Mfg. Co. are largely
responsible for the county moving from the lowest to
the moderate category for the two-week period start-
ing March 12. The county will return to the lowest of
the risk levels Friday, March 26, because new cases
dropped from 44 in the prior two-week measuring
period to 24 in the most recent, which ended March
20.
The governor should assure Baker County, and
other counties with similar COVID-19 trends, that
they will remain at the lowest risk, not for just two
weeks but unless the COVID-19 situation dictates
otherwise. If an outbreak occurs in the meantime,
the state should allow the Baker County Health
Department to decide whether the risk of wider com-
munity spread is suffi cient to impose stricter regula-
tions temporarily.
State offi cials also need to focus on the current
restrictions on businesses and other activities, some
of which might be as outdated as the two-week risk
level system.
— Jayson Jacoby, Baker City Herald editor
Free thought is being threatened
By Keith C. Burris
Free speech, and so free thought, is
under threat in America today.
We are not committed to it.
Free speech means nothing if it does
not apply to people and ideas that upset
us.
The doctrine of free speech is some-
thing like this: The people we most need
to hear from are the people we least
want to hear from.
But these days we are defi ning free
speech and thought down and defi ning
disagreement up.
Most political and cultural disagree-
ment is now considered to be upsetting
and divisive, rather than interesting
and constructive. We Americans are no
longer much interested in exploring each
other’s minds and backgrounds. We are
far more interested in defending our pet
assumptions and prejudices.
Differing views therefore often create
the feeling of being discomforted, even
unsafe.
National Review writer Kevin D.
Williamson was hired by The Atlantic
magazine some months ago, presumably
in the interest of intellectual diversity.
When it became clear that, in his new
home, he would continue to be himself
and take positions quite at odds with
most of The Atlantic family, and in his
own voice, the offi ce outrage was pal-
pable and the Twitter mob descended.
He had to be unhired within days of his
hiring.
Andrew Sullivan left New York
magazine saying: “A critical mass of the
staff and management at New York
Magazine and Vox Media no longer
want to associate with me.” He said
fellow staffers believed his columns
were “physically harming” them. His
sin? Though a classical liberal on many
issues and generally Democratic in his
politics, he dubs himself a conservative,
and is conservative on such matters as
immigration, religion and gender.
So, disagreement equals discomfort,
which requires separation.
But discomforting disagreements
may also be cast as “hate speech,” and
therefore verbal assault: Suppose a
person walks into a gathering of the
self-anointed virtuous, maybe even an
“inclusive” church, and mentions that he
is a member of the NRA, protests at an
abortion clinic each Saturday and voted
for Donald Trump. He might be viewed
as more than discomforting. He might
be viewed as disturbing and perhaps
threatening. He might well be asked to
leave.
How about a Biden supporter at a
“praise” church? Or a person in a “Black
Lives Matter” T-shirt in a rural Ohio or
Pennsylvania greasy spoon? How would
they be welcomed?
This sort of sensitivity — elevating
disagreement to threat — was almost
unheard of 50 years ago, when the coun-
try was more easygoing and people had
a sense of proportion and humor about
politics.
A friend of mine recently saw what
he thought had been an up-till-then
pleasant date end abruptly. “You are too
conservative for me,” the woman said.
She left a small tip and exited, stage left.
Are relationships to be subjected to
political litmus tests now? So much for
Tracy and Hepburn in “Adam’s Rib” in
which Tracy’s penultimate line is “vive la
difference.” So much for James Carville
and Mary Matalin, in real life. And so
much for two equally great Americans
and jurists, Antonin Scalia and Ruth
Bader Ginsburg, whose affection for each
other, opera and travel transcended their
disagreements about everything else.
I want to live in an America in which
affection transcends politics.
If one is more than the sum of his
words and thoughts, and assumes this
is true of others, he can love a man, as
my Dad did his brother and his brother
loved him, and think his politics daft.
But many, maybe most, of my fellow
Americans currently disagree.
I have “blue” friends who not only will
not contemplate living in a red state
but will not vacation in one. I have “red”
friends who say California and New
York are Gomorrah and ought to secede
from the union. They will not willingly
travel to either.
A hard-core Trumper, maybe even a
soft-core one, will tell you that no mercy
will be shown Joe Biden: He’s senile. He’s
a dupe of the left. He gets no honeymoon,
no chance, no assumption of goodwill
from us. He’s not my president. “We will
mess him up at every turn and create
social as well as political havoc.”
By the way, that’s speech. It may be
mean, stupid, unpatriotic and irrespon-
sible. But it is protected.
Which brings me to point No. 2: There
really is a slippery slope to canceled
speech and canceled history.
If Winston Churchill, both Roosevelts
and Thomas Jefferson, along with Dr.
Seuss are canceled, no one is safe.
No one will ever be pure enough.
Pick a good guy, pick a hero — John F.
Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Mother
Teresa, Dorothy Day, Abraham Lincoln,
George Washington — they all, all, had
fatal fl aws.
Human beings err. Great men and
women have blind spots, fallow times,
dark times.
What the cancel culture cannot see is
that eventually, everyone gets gone. For
if fl aws in the good guys mean they
must be erased, those of us who are
more fl awed and less gifted will surely
not be spared.
And there will be someone who says
“free speech for me but not thee —
defi nitely not thee,” for each and every
one of us.
There is a moral ground for free
speech and we must till and tend it: It
is the assumption of goodwill, comity,
listening and a sense of fair play —
four sides of humility.
For empiricists and historians, the
necessity of a humble and open mind
is the fi ckle nature of all times, trends
and passing wisdom.
For the classical liberal, it is the
marketplace of ideas: There are no ulti-
mate truths so we must keep seeking,
debating, learning and refi ning.
For the classical conservative,
there are ultimate truths, like God,
decency, loyalty, bravery and tradition.
But these can only be revealed and
defended in the arena — in the contest
of words, ideas and leadership.
But left and right today are united
in their illiberality, their intolerance
and their arrogance. Both sides wish
to live in echo chambers, be only with
people like themselves, have their own
facts and, indeed, their own journalism
and history, which affi rm their tribal
oaths.
How do we till the ground for free
speech?
Let the other guy speak. Assume he
loves the country, too. Respect the things
that he knows that you may not. Listen
awhile. Let affection trump opinion.
Keith C. Burris is editor, vice president and
editorial director of Block Newspapers.
Email: kburris@post-gazette.com.
OTHER VIEWS
Editorial from New York Daily News:
In practice, the standard for when elected
officials insist that a governing colleague must
resign following accusations of misconduct,
before an independent investigation or an
impeachment proceeding has been conducted,
is reminiscent of Supreme Court Justice Pot-
ter Stewart’s famous 1964 definition of what
constitutes hard-core pornography: “I know it
when I see it.”
There simply aren’t set-in-stone moral codes
delineating what behavior is so egregious,
that even when unproved, that it warrants a
politician’s immediate, voluntary departure
from public office. That vagueness often leads to
logical and moral inconsistencies. And political
expediency.
Is a single criminal complaint of choking your
wife during a fight qualitatively less bad than
the multiple accusations of sexual harassment
and unwanted physical contact New York Gov.
Andrew Cuomo is now facing? Hard to say.
But if it is, that would explain the relative
silence from state lawmakers about Bronx
state Sen. Luis Sepúlveda, who was arrested
on Jan. 12 on charges he choked his wife dur-
ing a domestic dispute. Sepúlveda claimed his
wife also physically attacked him and fi rmly
denied the charges, and his attorney says the
wife’s complaint was “a calculated attempt by
a disgruntled party to leverage a divorce settle-
ment.”
Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins
properly and immediately stripped Sepúlveda
of his committee chairmanship, which just hap-
pened to be the Crime Victims, Crime And Cor-
rection panel, saying “I take these allegations
extremely seriously and will be monitoring this
situation closely.” But not seriously enough for
her nor anyone else to demand that Sepúlveda
immediately resign. And there have been no
moves to expel him. But Stewart-Cousins says
that Cuomo must go.
Meanwhile, GOP Rep. Tom Reed from west-
ern New York is now being accused by a former
lobbyist of drunkenly groping her and unhook-
ing her bra at a bar during a 2017 outing after
a day of ice-fi shing. Reed has for weeks been
among the lawmakers of both parties calling
loudly for Cuomo to resign or face impeach-
ment for his various alleged misdeeds.
Will fellow Republicans like Reps. Nicole
Malliotakis, who started a petition calling
upon Cuomo to immediately resign, and Elise
Stefanik, who called Cuomo a “criminal sexual
predator” and demanded that he quit offi ce at
once, seek Reed’s ouster too?
Speaking of hypocrisy, it was just a few
days ago that Cuomo insisted that naysayers
and politicians calling for his removal should
instead wait for the conclusion of the attorney
general’s independent investigation into the
sexual harassment accusations.
“Wait for the facts,” Cuomo said last week.
And yet, word comes that Cuomo’s offi ce has
begun its own parallel inquiry into allegations
made by a current employee that he groped
her. If Cuomo really believes the AG’s indepen-
dent investigation should be the arbiter of the
facts, then why would he conduct his own, sepa-
rate and unsolicited probe? If he really believes
in the value of an independent investigation to
suss out the truth, then why did members of his
administration leak unflattering details of one
of his accusers’ state personnel file to reporters?
Never expect consistency in politics.