Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/410423
GregStevens,Publisher Chip Thompson, Editor EDITORIALBOARD How to have your say: Letters must be signed and provide the writer's home street address and home phone number. Anonymous letters, open letters to others, pen names and petition-style letters will not be allowed. Letters should be typed and no more than two double-spaced pages or 500words. When several letters address the same issue, a cross section will be published. Email: editor@red bluffdailynews.com Phone: 530-527- 2151ext. 112 Mail to: P.O. Box 220, 545 Diamond Ave., Red Bluff, CA 96080 Facebook: Leave comments at FACEBOOK.COM/ RBDAILYNEWS Twitter: Follow and send tweets to @REDBLUFFNEWS Get this: Millennials hate voice mail and don't o en bother to listen to their mes- sages. So reports NPR's "All Things Considered" in its "The New Boom" series. Asitgoes,millennialspre- fer to receive their information via text or Facebook messages. If they receive a voice mes- sage on their phone, they likely won't bother to listen to it. Which illustrates how rap- idly technology is changing human behavior. Whereas mil- lennials now consider it rude to leave them a voice message, it used to be considered rude to even have an answering de- vice. Social scientist James Katz told The Wall Street Jour- nal that answering machines were considered insulting in the 1970s. By the mid-1990s, though, more than two-thirds of U.S. homes had them, and of those, fully half used them to screen their calls. My old pal Gruntly, who never did like to talk on the phone, always used his an- swering machine to screen calls. When I used to call, say- ing, "Hello! Helloooo!," I knew Gruntly was sitting in a chair, eating Doritos and watching CNN. The only time his phone was ever picked up was when his wife was home. And though Gruntly never answered the phone at his house, he hung up on my an- swering machine every time he called. I know this because I was one of the first to pur- chase Caller ID when it be- came available in the '90s. Truth be told, I was shocked to learn how many people had been calling and hanging up on my machine when I wasn't home — and I was finally able to prove that Gruntly was one of the callers. I called him at work one day — he has to an- swer his work phone — and confronted him. Purcell: You called last night? Gruntly: No. Purcell: And the night be- fore? Gruntly: No. Purcell: Aha! I gleefully presented my high-tech evidence, while he surely squirmed in his of- fice chair. I admit it is a lit- tle creepy to have this sort of power over your friends, but Gruntly started it. I find it interesting that so many of the advances in tech- nology that are supposed to make our lives easier are in- stead making them much less civil. There are many other ex- amples. I was at the movies recently when I heard a cellphone ringing. A woman pulled the phone out of her purse and be- gan talking. I turned to her and said, "Excuse me!" She glared back as though I was rude for interrupting her con- versation. But maybe I was the rude one. Technology is changing the rules of etiquette so rap- idly, who knows what's right or wrong anymore? Is it in- considerate to screen calls or should you answer? Where and when should you use your cell phone? Where and when should you turn off its ringer? That's why I wonder, some- times, if all of our gadgets are improving our lives. Be- fore we had e-mail, we had to use typewriters or hand- write letters to each other. Be- fore cell phones, we had to use pay phones or wait until we got home to make calls. Be- fore answering machines and Caller ID, we were forced to answer our phones and be po- lite to people we didn't want to talk to. But no more. In any event, while millen- nials are sour on answering machines and voice mail, my parents still use their answer- ing machine every day. They used to answer their phone no matter when I called. But they're retired now and they no longer want to deal with their children's dramas. They screen calls with their answer- ing machine all of the time. Mom and Dad, I know you're home. Would you please pick up the phone. TomPurcell,authorof"Mis- adventures of a 1970s Child- hood" and "Comical Sense: A Lone Humorist Takes on a World Gone Nutty!" is a Pitts- burgh Tribune-Review humor columnist. Send comments to Tom at Purcell@caglecartoons. com. Tom Purcell Whymillennials hate voice mail I find it interesting that so many of the advances in technology that are supposed to make our lives easier are instead making them much less civil. Cartoonist's take Last week's tragic shootings in Canada and Washington state are certain to lead to new calls for gun control. The media-gen- erated fear over "lone wolf ter- rorists" will enable the gun control lobby to smear Second Amendment supporters as "pro- terrorist." Marketing gun con- trol as an anti-terrorist measure will also enable gun control sup- porters to ally with those who support any infringement on lib- erty done in the name of "home- land security." As with most infringements on liberty, gun control will not only make us less free, it will make us less safe. Respecting the right of the people to keep and bear arms is the original and best homeland security pol- icy. Restricting the right of peo- ple to arm themselves leaves them with no effective defense against violent criminals or a ty- rannical government. Every year, thousands of Americans use firearms to stop violent criminals. One nota- ble example occurred in Sep- tember, when Oklahoman Mark Vaughan used a rifle to stop a knife-wielding co-worker who had already killed one person and wounded another. Unfortu- nately, most of the media cover- age focused on speculation that the assailant was motivated by "radical Islam" rather than on Vaughan's use of a firearm to protect innocent lives. It is no coincidence that states that pass "concealed carry" laws experience a drop in crime. Since passing concealed carry in Texas in 1995, murder in the state has declined by 52 percent. In comparison, the national murder rate declined by only 33 percent. Perhaps the best illustra- tion of the dangers of gun con- trol is federal regulations for- bidding pilots from having guns in their cockpits. Ironically, this rule went into effect shortly be- fore September 11, 2001. If pi- lots had the ability to carry guns on 9/11, the hijackers may well have been stopped from attack- ing the World Trade Center and Pentagon or persuaded to not even try. Shortly after 9/11, I intro- duced legislation allowing pilots to carry firearms in the cockpits. Congress eventually passed a bill allowing pilots to carry fire- arms if they obtain federal certi- fication and obey federal regula- tions. Aside from the philosoph- ical objection that no one should have to ask government permis- sion before exercising a right, the rules and expensive approval process discourage many pilots from participating in the armed pilots program. It should not be surprising that the anti-gun Obama Ad- ministration wants to eliminate the armed pilots program. I ac- tually agree that the program should be eliminated, so long as pilots who can legally carry a firearm in their states of resi- dence can carry a firearm on the planes they fly. Allowing pilots to carry guns is certainly a more effective way of protecting our security than forcing all airline passengers to endure the TSA. Both gun control and foreign interventionism disregard the wisdom of the country's found- ers. An interventionist foreign policy, like gun control, threat- ens our safety. A hyper-inter- ventionist foreign policy invites blowback from those who re- sent our government meddling in their countries while gun con- trol leaves people defenseless against violent criminals. Re- turning to a foreign policy of peace and free trade and repeal- ing all federal infringements on the Second Amendment will help guarantee both liberty and security. Ron Paul is a former Congress- man and Presidential can- didate. He can be reached at VoicesofLiberty.com. Ron Paul More guns plus less war equals real security Another view By Jason Stanford Partisanship, for lack of a better word, is good. You won't find a more unexamined as- sumption in America today than a sneering contempt for partisanship. Yet partisanship persists, an evolutionary fact of life in our democracy because it is an ineffable expression of the American experiment. Par- tisanship isn't just what we do instead of shooting each other but how we express our moral values. It used to not be so. Being a partisan a generation or two ago meant trucking with many people you disagreed with. The Democratic Party was a coa- lition of people who couldn't stand each other for ideological reasons. This is sometimes true today, but for personal reasons. Whatever our interpersonal gripes, and they are legion, we all largely agree on questions of right and wrong and what is important to us. Our partisanship is now not a marriage of convenience but an expression of our moral val- ues. On the big issues of the day—marriage equality, eco- nomics, feminism—we agree. That's why we're all Democrats now. And the same goes for Re- publicans, more or less. This realignment of our two major parties along ideological lines has turned our politics from an endless series of moral com- promises into a larger debate about right and wrong. Is that so wrong? We were once divided along ideological lines before, and it led to the Civil War. Out of that national horror, the phi- losophy of pragmatism was born, and for more than a cen- tury we made concessions for the greater good. I am, of course, oversimplifying things. This is a column, not a college seminar, and I must have left my Ph.D. in my other pants. Then the Civil Rights Era banged into the Vietnam War and was wrapped in women's lib and don't forget the Cold War. Suddenly, making compro- mises meant sacrificing what you thought was most impor- tant in the world: right and wrong, life and death, peace and war. So we went to war with each other, but this time peacefully, using ballots in- stead of bullets. Our civic war may have reached a stalemate, but the armies still believe it's worth fighting. The calls for surrender are growing. My friends Mark Mc- Kinnon and Matthew Dowd were former Democrats who turned Republican to elect George W. Bush president and now are professional advocates for an armistice. McKinnon, bless his heart, proselytizes for a post-partisan world with No Labels, and Dowd argues sin- cerely for peace in his columns and on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Cass Sunstein, a former Obama White House official who now teaches at Harvard Law School, calls partisanship "partyism" and has written that it "now exceeds racial preju- dice." New York Times column- ist David Brooks, wrote, "To judge human beings on politi- cal labels is to deny and ignore what is most important about them. It is to profoundly de- value them. That is the core sin of prejudice, whether it is rac- ism or partyism." What should come as no surprise to careful readers of Brooks woeful oeuvre is that he gets things exactly backwards, and Sunstein's coinage of par- tisanship-as-discrimination is even worse. A party label is not superficial. It describes the moral contents of a person who chooses it. Contrary to what Brooks writes, a political label can indicate what is most im- portant to a person, and to sug- gest otherwise is to blithely ig- nore that. This is why we fight this bloodless civic war. "Par- tisan" and "campaign" are originally military terms, and every college freshman should have learned the Carl von Clausewitz quote that "War is the continuation of politics by other means." The inverse is also true because both war and politics are ex- pressions of the same truth. Some things are worth fight- ing about. In fact, the fight is the point of America. This system of gov- ernment has checks and bal- ances. Majority rules, but not absolutely. We are not supposed to agree. We are supposed to keep fighting, one election at a time. Partisanship, in all of its forms, that has marked the peaceful stretch democracy since the Civil War. You mark my words, partisanship will save that malfunctioning corpo- ration called the U.S.A. Jason Stanford is a regu- lar contributor to the Austin American-Statesman, a Dem- ocratic consultant and a Tru- man National Security Proj- ect partner. You can email him at stanford@oppresearch.com and follow him on Twitter @ JasStanford. Partisanship is good Allowing pilots to carry guns is certainly a more effective way of protecting our security than forcing all airline passengers to endure the TSA. OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Wednesday, November 5, 2014 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A4