Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/682236
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@ redbluffdailynews.com Fax: 530-527-9251 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 A wise Alaskan once said, "If you tie a wolf to a sled dog team, there will be lots of ac- tivity but no forward progress." Hewasright,andhisex- cellent word picture can eas- ily be applied to the state of things in America these days, given all the commotion hap- pening over bathrooms, wed- ding cakes and other non-is- sues raised by the proverbial wolves of secular liberal- ism who prey about, seeking to devour what's left of the America our Founder's estab- lished. Sure, conservatism struck out this election cy- cle, but like the Boston Red Sox learned from being 0-3 against the Yankees in the 2004 World Series, persis- tence pays off. Take it from this blonde columnist who has experienced more dis- appointing defeats than vic- tories in her life thus far — pushing forward, despite temporary defeat is the stuff winning is made of — espe- cially when what we're do- ing is less about us and more about "For love of the game." Or, in the case of conserva- tism, for the love of God and country. That kind of devotion is maddening to the wolves of secular liberalism who will not rest until they've removed all things rational, moral, tra- ditional and right, like lib- eral Harvard Professor Mark Tushnet, who says the culture wars are over and his side won, simply because they are on top this inning. The highly educated but not-so-wise professor is already making plans on what should be done to those conservatives, evan- gelical conservatives specif- ically, he claims lost the cul- ture wars. Bloviating in Balkin- blogspot.com on May 6, Tush- net proposed "taking a hard line" approach over playing nice would suffice. "Trying to be nice to the losers didn't work well after the Civil War... (And taking a hard line seemed to work reasonably well in Germany and Japan after 1945)," he wrote. You re- ally cannot fix stupid. The sheer idiocy of equating evan- gelical conservatives to the Nazi's of 1945 Germany high- lights why it's necessary for liberals to hunker down be- hind fake labels and syrupy words to disguise how they really feel. As Ronald Reagan once said, "The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn't so." "But the war's over, and we won," Tushnet bragged in his blogging rant. Maybe in his mind it's over, but what he and other secular liberals fail to get is that it's funda- mentally impossible to win a war that's already been won. (Evangelicals understand that the ultimate "culture war" be- tween right and wrong was waged on a cross two thou- sand years ago.) The battles we fight to- day are for the hearts and minds of individuals and for the soul of a nation blessed by God once upon a time and in a land far, far away from this dark place we now stand where wolves seek to de- vour the very things which al- low them the ability to freely roam. President Reagan propheti- cally understood the dangers we face: "If we lose freedom here, there is no place to es- cape to. This is the last stand on Earth...Whether we believe in our capacity for self-gov- ernment or whether we aban- don the ideals of the Amer- ican revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them our- selves." I hate to break it to liberal- ism's wolves, but all of us irri- tating conservatives will con- tinue getting up, knockdown after knockdown, because, as Braveheart's William Wallace said, "It's all for nothing if you don't have freedom." SusanStamperBrownSusan lives in Alaska and writes about culture, politics and current events. She was selected as one of America's 50 Best Conservative writers for 2015. Contact her by Facebook or at writestamper@gmail. com. Susan Stamper Brown Liberalism is the wolf on a sled dog team Cartoonist's take It is interesting, and occa- sionally informative, what lo- cal columnists choose to write about. B. Cornelius writes of his early education and his eventual land- ing of the position as head of our lo- cal Probation De- partment. When you consider what variations on the theme of ju- venile delinquency that must have marched through his of- fice, and the decisions he had to make, one can believe that while he offered a new way of life for many, there remained the possibility of a life of crime for the incorrigibles. Such deci- sions could indeed keep Bill up late at night. However, he must have enjoyed the comfort of his first and only wife, of whom he writes lovingly and often. Columnist S. Statham's writ- ings, however, have come from a very different background. He decided early on to become a Chico TV broadcaster and then a state legislator, which thrust him into perhaps the most im- portant role of his life. He was elected as a Republican to the California State Assembly in 1976, and served until 1994. Surprisingly, Stan was known as an advocate, at the time, of the State of Jefferson. Whereas he often writes about his experiences in Sac- ramento, he deviated from the political in a recent column in which he candidly discussed his second marriage and, in his words, "the bliss and stability that it produced." He continued, "Even though Roleeda (his sec- ond wife) and I have lived, loved and cried, how fortunate it is that we have had such a stim- ulating life. I was not as fortu- nate with my first wife. How- ever, at Roleeda's request, I will tastefully refrain from sharing any other details of that first marriage with the Red Bluff Daily News readership." That was probably a good de- cision on Mr. Statham's part. ••• It is often charming to read the "100 years ago" entry in the DN. A recent one read "For- mer owner of bakery is dead: Bad heart" and went on to re- port that "Albert Becker, for- mer proprietor of the German Bakery, in this city, and a resi- dent of this section for the past 20 years, died of a heart disease while sitting at the breakfast ta- ble Thursday morning." It is un- likely you would see such de- scription these days. It would almost seem an invasion of pri- vacy to disclose such an inti- mate happening, and yet it hu- manizes an event which is often obscured by descriptions such as "died of natural causes." ••• A profile of the late poet Wal- lace Stevens in the New Yorker indicated the fellow, though not religious, often sat in a vacant church to "enjoy the sanctity" of same. This may illustrate one's personal ambiguity with orga- nized religion. Huge cathedrals, in this coun- try and others, beg the question "How can the construction of these mammoth edifices be rec- onciled with the contradictory theory of one God and one re- ligion, when the evidence sug- gests the contrary? Contrast a Buddhist Temple with, say, Westminster Cathedral. Can a seeker of truth enter either with any certainty of one being the "approved," the "truly enlight- ened" place and the other being perhaps a lesser construct? ••• There are cultural happen- ings that elude those of us look- ing to broaden our base when it comes to art, music and the like. Take the works of the late musician Prince. His full name is Prince Rog- ers Nelson. However, that would not have proved to be a grabber and so he chose Prince and did very well by the title. That he was immensely popu- lar with certain age groups, and knew when to play and when to fall back, proved him a mas- ter of his show biz destiny. But one Vinson Cunningham, in a New Yorker article, dubbed him a "genius," and I take is- sue with this accolade. When Vinson writes, "No one, per- haps, was more suited to ex- ploit the idea of genius-as-an enigma than Prince who died at 57. He played impenetrabil- ity like a guitar. To think about him was to ask a series of ques- tions: Why purple? Whence the glyph? Did he really love spa- ghetti and ice cream?" No, I think the question to ask the current editor of the New Yorker is, "Who is this clown writer to whom you have given your valuable space? Would not founder Harold Ross or successor William Shawn have been appalled if presented with such drivel in the old days? Tsk, tsk. ••• My neighbor was working in his yard when he was startled by a late-model car that came crashing through his hedge and ended up in his front lawn. He rushed to help the elderly lady driver out of the car and sat her down on a lawn chair. He said with excitement, "You appear quite elderly to be driving." "Well, yes, I am," she replied proudly. "I'll be 97 next month, and I am now old enough that I don't even need a driver's li- cense anymore." He asked "How do you know that?" "Well, the last time I went to my doctor, he examined me and asked if I had a driver's license. I told him, yes and handed it to him. He took scissors out of the drawer, cut the license into pieces, and threw them in the waste basket, saying, 'You won't need this anymore.' So I thanked him and left." Robert Minch is a lifelong resident of Red Bluff, former columnist for the Corning Daily Observer and Meat Industry magazine and author of the "The Knocking Pen." He can be reached at rminchandmurray@hotmail. com. I say Intriguing topics chosen by fellow columnists The battles we fight today are for the hearts and minds of individuals and for the soul of a nation blessed by God once upon a time and in a land far, far away from this dark place we now stand where wolves seek to devour the very things which allow them the ability to freely roam. Robert Minch This one's for all the "Bernie Bros" out there. If you ever spent as much as a moment com- plaining about the de- monstrably unjust and vi- olent treatment of pro- testers at Donald Trump's campaign rallies, now's a great time to take a long, hard look in the mirror and consider your own hypocrisy. You can't miss it. It's glaring. But in case you're too addled by your own mis- guided passions, let me ex- plain it to you. Slowly. You cannot simultane- ously denounce Trump for being xenophobic, anti-Se- mitic or misogynist when the more pea-brained among you send, as was the case last week, thou- sands of abusive text mes- sages to, and leave hideous voicemails on, the cell- phone of Nevada's Demo- cratic state chairwoman, Roberta Lange. "Praying to God some- one shoots you in the FACE and blows your de- mocracy-stealing head off!" one thoughtful soul said, according to The Washington Post's Dana Milbank. You cannot complain about ugly clashes be- tween pro- and anti- Trump forces outside his rallies — as was the case at the Pennsylvania Farm Show last month — when the more Neanderthalic among you rush the stage and throw chairs when Nevada's Democrats de- cide they like Hillary Clin- ton better than your guy. Not when you say this, as veteran Las Vegas polit- ical reporter Jon Ralston revealed: "You f—-ing stupid b—-! What the hell are you do- ing? You're a f—-ing cor- rupt b—-!" But if your ultimate goal is to hasten Bernie Sand- ers' descent into irrele- vance, to undo the very necessary work he's done of pointing out fundamen- tal inequities in American society, keep at it, you're succeeding beyond your wildest expectations. Sanders could stop this with a word, but instead he walked away Tuesday during the middle of an interview when he was asked about it. All that does is provide not-so-tacit license to his supporters to continue their thuggish behavior. Later in the day on Tuesday, Sanders issued a statement simultaneously condemning the violence. But he undid it with a bit of eye-for-an-eye whin- ing and a barely veiled threat against his fellow Democrats: "I condemn any and all forms of violence, includ- ing the personal harass- ment of individuals," he said. "But, when we speak of violence, I should add here that months ago, dur- ing the Nevada campaign, shots were fired into my campaign office in Ne- vada and apartment hous- ing complex my campaign staff lived in was broken into and ransacked." That's awful — but it's not a justification. Not by any measure. And he added that "if the Democratic Party is to be successful in Novem- ber, it is imperative that all state parties treat our campaign supporters with fairness and the respect that they have earned ... At [the Nevada] convention the Democratic leadership used its power to prevent a fair and transparent pro- cess from taking place." One of the great things about Sanders' and Trump's unorthodox cam- paigns is that both men have brought people into the political process who might have sat out this year's election entirely. Agree or disagree with the candidates, the pres- ence of this new blood is critically important if a representative democracy is going to survive and flourish. You don't do it by throwing chairs and mak- ing death threats. That's not democracy. It's something much, much uglier. And we're better than that. John Micek Bernie supporters are an embarrassment to politics OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Friday, May 20, 2016 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A4