TUESDAY, JULY 13, 2021
Baker City, Oregon
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OUR VIEW
Congress:
Pass No
Pain Act
Blake’s opioid addiction began after a motor-
cycle accident when he was in his teens. He needed
multiple surgeries to repair his jaw and mouth. His
mom, Tony Karlowicz of Sunriver, told us he was
prescribed opioids for the pain.
Blake got hooked.
By the time he was 19, he was addicted to heroin.
He did get into treatment. He still died from an over-
dose on July 23, 2019. He was 28.
More than 800,000 people have died in the United
States since 1999 from a drug overdose. Opioid over-
doses make up an alarming percentage.
In 2019, 70% of all drug overdose deaths in the
country involved opioids. In Oregon, an average of
fi ve people die a week from opioid overdose. In De-
schutes County, there were 66 overdose deaths from
opioids from 2016-18.
Deschutes County Sheriff Shane Nelson told us in-
creasingly his team have had to administer not just
one but multiple doses of naloxone to help reverse
opioid overdoses. He believes naloxone has helped
his deputies save at least 30 lives in the last 5 or so
years.
Oregon already encourages and supports nono-
pioid treatments. It collects better data to track the
problem. Prescriptions for opioids have been declin-
ing steadily. And anyone can get naloxone from a
pharmacist. But opioid addiction is still ruining too
many lives here and across the country.
The No Pain Act could help. It’s a bill in Congress
with bipartisan support. Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley,
a Democrat, is a cosponsor. The bill shifts billing
practices in Medicare to attempt to encourage more
nonopioid solutions for pain. It doesn’t ban opioids
or eliminate reimbursement for them. It attempts to
make it easier to use nonopioids.
“Across Oregon, I’ve seen the devastation and
heartbreak in the faces of families who have lost
loved ones to the illness of opioid addiction,” Merkley
told us in a statement. “All too often, these life-
destroying addictions begin with a doctor’s prescrip-
tion. We should be doing everything in our power to
encourage doctors to prescribe non-opioid painkillers
when possible, so it makes absolutely zero sense for
Medicare to make it more cost-effective for hospitals
to prescribe opioids rather than other pain manage-
ment alternatives.”
There is a consideration about the bill to be aware
of. The backers of the Voices for Non-Opioid Choices
Coalition that supports the bill’s passage includes
funding from Pacira Biosciences, a manufacturer of
nonopioid pain relievers, and other manufacturers.
The coalition is, in fact, much broader — represent-
ing a range of medical professionals, addiction and
recovery organizations and more.
The No Pain Act won’t solve the opioid crisis. But
passing it could help prevent more overdoses and
family anguish.
Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the Baker City Herald.
Columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions
of the authors and not necessarily that of the Baker City Herald.
America needs to restore the
shine to the idea of patriotism
By Kevin Frazier
It’s hard to be a global citizen if
you’ve never left the country. It’s im-
practical to champion a continent-wide
community when its inhabitants share
little, besides geography, in common.
What’s left is patriotism — a nation
is the broadest jurisdiction capable of
creating a sense of community, even
among strangers. Only those with the
privilege of traveling like global citizens,
reading like global citizens, and guiding
global businesses are likely to second
guess the merits of patriotism. For the
rest (and majority) of Americans, the
nation will remain the most proximate
and most powerful source of loyalty,
and, consequently, action.
Absent reviving a sense of patriotism,
the American Experiment is destined to
fail. Though patriotism operates at the
national level, it’s our best shot of solv-
ing national as well as global problems.
If you care about climate change, you
should promote a strong, nationwide
community that’s willing to collec-
tively sacrifi ce for the good of the entire
country (and, by secondary effects,
the world). If you care about income
inequality, the odds of redistributive
policies passing are much greater if
elites feel a common bond and share
common goals with the likely recipients
of government support. Finally, if you
care about the health of our democracy,
then patriotism can make possible bold,
nationwide, democracy-building proj-
ects like creating an expected national
service program.
Yet, rather than celebrate patriotism
as a tool to wield, many have come
to associate any sense of allegiance
to their fellow Americans as a show
of moral recklessness and historical
ignorance. To wear the American fl ag is
to support white supremacy. To honor
the members of the Armed Services is
to condone imperialism, past, present,
and future. To participate in the Pledge
of Allegiance is to submit to a “Hunger
Games”-esque ritual that reinforces a
fl awed and fundamentally unaccept-
able government.
The perception of an attack on patrio-
tism is widespread. Take, for example,
The New York Times 1619 project.
While motivated by an understand-
able desire to correct omissions in our
understanding of the role of race in the
founding of America, the perceived use
of the project as a governor on anyone,
at any age, developing patriotic feelings
is problematic. The project contains sev-
eral examples of what’s fl awed with the
nation’s founding; as with any nation,
there are lots of them — especially, in
the American case, egregious mistreat-
ment of enslaved individuals. The fatal
fl aw of the project, according to its de-
tractors, is citing those founding fl aws
as reason to forever perceive America
as a nation unworthy of the public’s
patriotism. For some proponents of the
project, its best interpretation is that
no amount of progress can overcome
the nation’s early years and continued
struggles with racial equality. In either
case, the project has contributed to a
troubling partisan skew to patriotism.
The unnecessary move from his-
torical analysis to modern attack on
patriotism is not only driving certain
liberal families away from American af-
fi nity, it’s also accelerating conservative
affi nity for the state as their primary
political community. Texas, presumably
in response to attacks on patriotism,
has opted to reinforce ties to the state.
The state recently adopted a new
pledge to the Texas state fl ag: “Honor
the Texas fl ag; I pledge allegiance to
thee, Texas, one state under God, one
and indivisible.”
The more liberal elites push for global
citizenship (which is unrealistic and
uncommon — though people may say
they see themselves as global citizens
that belief will rarely compel meaning-
ful action) or citizenship by identity
(be it racial, sexual preference, gender
conception), the more conservatives
will push for even narrower concep-
tions of citizenship (in the best cases, at
the level of the state, and, in the worst
cases, by race). As a result, neither of
our two major political communities
will be capable of activating the broad-
est community at our disposal — the
nation. Instead, the best each party can
hope for is to move small fractions of
the public to take even more extreme
steps toward partisan goals.
Attacks of patriotism generally suf-
fer from a fatal fl aw: assuming that
patriotism means total and unequivocal
support for a nation’s history and cur-
rent actions. Patriotism, though, is more
akin to your relationship with your
parents. Lord knows they aren’t perfect
(neither are you), but you persist in
talking with them, learning from them,
and sharing with them. Their fl aws are
painful and often detrimental to your
own well-being, but you don’t give up on
them. The good they’ve done has made
possible the opportunities available to
you today, so you remain thankful for
the positives, while still acknowledging
that negatives exist.
It’s true that new symbols, new
heroes, and new stories may be neces-
sary to make patriotism as positive and
powerful as possible. The old means
of encouraging love of country among
Americans have grown tired and have
been exposed as less unifying than
previously imagined (or acknowledged).
So rather than abandon patriotism,
progressives should help develop new
means of tying all Americans together
under our national umbrella.
I’m committed to joining the U.S. Air
Force Reserves not because of familial
ties to the Armed Services nor because
of some idea of American exceptional-
ism. I joined because there’s something
uniquely powerful about working with
people of all races, incomes, back-
grounds, and beliefs who share a com-
mon goal and a common willingness to
sacrifi ce to reach that goal. Progressive
policy outcomes will never be realized
until the power of patriotism is revived
and channeled toward the myriad is-
sues confronting the American Experi-
ment.
Kevin Frazier was born and raised in
Oregon and is attending the UC Berkeley
School of Law. In his spare time he runs
The Oregon Way, a statewide,
nonpartisan blog.
OTHER VIEWS
Editorial from The St. Louis
Post-Dispatch:
As Missouri struggles with a
worst-in-the-nation resurgence of
the coronavirus, centered on unvac-
cinated citizens in heavily Repub-
lican areas of the state, Republican
Gov. Mike Parson is once again
doing his part to make the situation
worse. Parson — whose infamous
“dang mask” derision of pandemic
safety protocols last year seemed
like the height of irresponsibility —
has outdone himself by implying
this week that the Biden admin-
istration is threatening to “compel
vaccination” of Missouri citizens.
This is a potentially deadly lie that
Parson should retract immediately.
Parson’s statement is part of what
looks like a concerted effort on the
right to willfully misrepresent com-
ments President Joe Biden made
Tuesday in his effort to convince
Americans to get vaccinated, saying
that “we need to go to community
by community, neighborhood by
neighborhood, and oftentimes, door
to door — literally knocking on
doors — to get help to the remain-
ing people protected from the virus.”
In context, it was clear that he
was talking about an information
campaign, nothing more. Nonethe-
less, right-wingers have seized on
the “knocking on doors” reference to
imply Biden wants federal storm-
troopers to force vaccinations on
unsuspecting citizens.
Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene,
R-Ga., and Lauren Boebert, R-Colo.,
even invoked Nazi Germany — a
deeply offensive comparison, but
nothing less than would be expected
from two of the most unhinged
fanatics in Congress.
Parson essentially threw in his
lot with those zealots on Wednes-
day night. “I have directed our
health department to let the federal
government know that sending
government employees or agents
door-to-door to compel vaccination
would NOT be an effective OR a
welcome strategy in Missouri!” he
tweeted.
Compel? Has Parson paid any
attention at all to Biden’s policy
on this? The administration has
steadfastly refused to mandate or
track vaccinations — or to even
recommend that private busi-
nesses do so, drawing criticism from
medical advocates who say a more
forceful approach is needed. The
administration’s entire vaccination
effort has been properly predicated
on fact-driven persuasion.
With his misleading tweet,
Parson has made that persuasion
more diffi cult. As the delta variant
ravages the very portions of Mis-
souri where conservative voices like
his hold sway, he has given aid and
comfort to the enemy in a war for
his state’s health. As of mid-week,
the rate of new cases in Missouri
was tied with that of Arkansas, and
greater than in any other state.
How does Parson imagine that sow-
ing anti-vaccine, anti-government
paranoia will bring those numbers
down?
Parson’s comparatively mild
public statements encouraging
vaccination aren’t nearly enough. It
isn’t a coincidence that the corona-
virus resurgence, both in Missouri
and nationally, is centered in politi-
cally conservative regions where
vaccination rates are low. Parson’s
bully pulpit allows him to be part of
the solution or part of the problem.
How long will he continue to choose
the latter?