Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/713226
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, 728Main St., Red Bluff, CA 96080 Facebook: Leave comments at FACEBOOK.COM/ RBDAILYNEWS Twitter: Follow and send tweets to @REDBLUFFNEWS The Republican race has gone nuclear. One big reason why GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump is cratering lately — brand new polls show him 11 points down in Pennsylvania, 9 points down in Michigan, 15 points down in New Hampshire — is be- cause people are catching on to the fact that he's too unstable, too reckless and policy- ignorant, to command our nuclear arsenal in an unstable world. ThatperceptionkilledBarry Goldwater's conservative can- didacy in 1964 — perhaps un- fairly, because veteran sena- tor Goldwater was not a policy novice — and now it's dogging Trump. Rightfully so. The latest detonation came on the "Morning Joe" show, when co-host and ex-Repub- lican congressman Joe Scar- borough dropped this into our wakeup coffee: "Several months ago a foreign policy expert on the international level went to advise Don- ald Trump, and three times he asked about the use of nu- clear weapons. Three times, he asked at one point, 'If we have them why can't we use them?'....Three times in an hour briefing, 'Why can't we use nuclear weapons?'" Scarborough didn't iden- tify his source (was it the for- eign policy expert? someone who'd spoken to the expert?); nor did he say whether he's been sitting on this anecdote for months or just learned of it. But it rings true, because it jibes with everything else Trump has said. Back in March, he told Chris Matthews that tacti- cal nukes were a possible op- tion during a European cri- sis (or during a confrontation with ISIS); in his words, "I'm not taking any cards off the ta- ble." When Matthews said that our allies would be disturbed to hear a president talk so cav- alierly about nukes, Trump re- plied, "Then why are we mak- ing them? Why do we make them?" He doesn't even know how our nuclear arsenal is set up. During a debate last Decem- ber, he was asked to com- ment about the "nuclear triad" (three delivery systems — planes, subs, land-based mis- siles). He replied with a long riff about how "we need some- body absolutely that we can trust, who is totally respon- sible," and then replied to a follow-up with, "I think — I think, for me, nuclear is just the power, the devastation is very important to me." He had no clue. He probably thinks triad is a synonym for a menage a trois. Goldwater had logged years on Senate foreign policy com- mittees. But after a string of comments about the alleged perils of signing a nuclear test- ban treaty and the alleged benefits of using tactical nukes in Vietnam, and some jokey talk about the mightiness of American missiles (we oughta "lob one into the men's room at the Kremlin"), he got tagged as a dangerous loon. Lyndon Johnson's Democratic opera- tives saw to that. On the night of Sept. 7, NBC aired an LBJ campaign ad. It featured 3-year-old Mo- nique Corzilius of Pine Beach, New Jersey (with her par- ents' OK, for a fee of $100). She plucked some daisy pet- als and counted up to 10. Then came the stentorian voiceover, counting down to a nuclear launch. The bomb exploded as LBJ (quoting W.H. Auden) in- toned, "These are the stakes — to make a world in which all of God's children can live, or to go into the dark. We must either love each other. Or we must die." Hillary Clinton's campaign hasn't crafted anything as bla- tant as the famous "Daisy" ad, but it doesn't need to. Its most ubiquitous ad — the one that shows little kids watch- ing Trump on TV — connects with what the public is al- ready sensing. And with what national security experts are darkly warning. One such expert — Michael Hayden, who was George W. Bush's CIA director — ap- peared Wednesday on "Morn- ing Joe." Scarborough's much- circulated remark has re- grettably overshadowed what Hayden said on cam- era: "(Trump) is inconsistent. And when you're the head of a global super power, inconsis- tency, unpredictability, those are dangerous things. They frighten your friends and they tempt your enemies. And so I would be very, very con- cerned." Which well-credentialed national security experts are counseling Trump? Are there any advisers whom Hayden re- spects? Hayden's reply: "No one." I trust there are many rea- sons why Trump is trail- ing Clinton nationally by 10 points — in the latest Fox News poll, no less. But it's surely the nuclear factor that's prompting many Re- publicans to question Trump's candidacy. Too bad the Re- publican National Committee bylaws requires his willing- ness to quit. Too bad he's deaf to something he said in that Republican debate last winter, because the irony is squirm- worthy: "The biggest problem we have...is some maniac, having some madman go out and get a nuclear weapon." DickPolmanisthenational political columnist at NewsWorks/WHYY in Philadelphia (newsworks. org/polman) and a "Writer in Residence" at the University of Pennsylvania. Email him at dickpolman7@gmail.com. Dick Polman Can the GOP nuke its own nominee? Cartoonist's take By now, both parties' conven- tions will have played out as po- litical performance art, shall we say; writing in late June for an August column allows for a focus on topics that will be relevant no matter what tran- spires in Cleve- land or Philadel- phia. Such events occur in the midst of larger po- litical and ideological contests that overlap, to a great degree, the candidates, personalities, controversies and the issues of the day. In America's past, the two major parties each contained ideological diversity: Repub- licans of more liberal persua- sion shared the table, or stage, with the more conservative side of the party; Democrats would welcome the culturally, militar- ily conservative union house- holds. The general narrative for the Republican Party has been well discussed (although over- stated) among the media class and political intelligentsia—that it has moved hard right and ex- pelled less ideological mod- erates. From the Democratic Party there has been an even more pronounced exit, or purg- ing, of moderates and conserva- tives—on abortion, the military, the size and reach of govern- ment, and cultural hot buttons like gay marriage. Because the news media have decidedly left-of-center, pro- Democrat leanings—based on voting records, contribution patterns and positions on is- sues—they exaggerate the Re- publicans-going-right theme while hardly even noticing the Democrats-going-left counter narrative. Self-identified Inde- pendents are free to form their own opinion, but it's true as I see it. I'll share with readers some thoughts on progressiv- ism/leftism and what is at stake in November. Look up "Resolving the con- tradiction of 'Progressivism,'" by Steven Hayward (4/29). There is a glaring contradiction in Progressive ideology, which emphasizes greater "democ- racy" through innovations like the direct election of U.S. Sen- ators and direct referendums and initiatives. "Give the peo- ple what they want! Up with democracy! At the same time, Progressives also advanced the theory of government admin- istration deliberately remote from politics and popular ac- countability," using "experts." The government of men is to be replaced with the administra- tion of things. A former Leninist, Martin Diamond, writing in the late 1960s, understood this clearly: "The liberal aim is thus clear. In order to transform the hu- man condition, the liberal (pro- gressive) seeks to make the po- litical order fully dependent upon a transformed people. To achieve the transformation, he seeks the right kind of consti- tutional institutions to produce the right kind of party to pro- duce the right kind of majority." Central to liberalism/progres- sivism is the premise that the truly "democratic" party must, as one unified body, forge a ma- jority from the masses that sup- ports liberal goals. The progressive movement believes that it must imbue in the masses the acceptance of those goals because history pro- ceeds inevitably as they foresee it. The same applies to the in- terim goals, the achievement of which "the Constitution with its 'auxiliary precautions' (checks and balances, federalism, dis- tributed power and representa- tive democracy) does indeed ob- struct the way." You could say that Progressives are indistin- guishable from totalitarians, as the elitist minority defines from the onset what the majority must believe to be "truly dem- ocratic." The above pattern of the pro- gressive movement is the core of the Democratic Party's plat- form of beliefs, whether individ- ual party members realize it or not; it is alien to what the Re- publican Party stands for. In a similar vein, political correctness is rejected by Re- publicans and embraced by Democrats. Anthony Daniels (aka Theodore Dalrymple): "Po- litical correctness is commu- nist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societ- ies (DP: interchangeable with 'socialist'), I came to the conclu- sion that the purpose of com- munist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corre- sponded to reality the better. "When people are forced to remain silent when they are be- ing told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies them- selves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-oper- ate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist any- thing is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emascu- lated liars is easy to control." Asked if it is proper for polit- ical leaders to model virtue, au- thor Eric Metaxas replied: "Gen- erally speaking, yes. How they behave affects how citizens think of the whole government and the whole nation. When one has a Washington or a Lin- coln in leadership, one knows that one can generally trust one's government to do the right thing, even when it is very, very difficult to do the right thing. Virtuous leaders inspire virtue in the citizenry (and) the belief that the system is not rigged…" Asked if that implies that you cannot vote for Trump: "Not only can we vote for Trump, we must vote for Trump, because with all of his foibles, peccadilloes, and the metaphorical warts, he is nonetheless the last best hope of keeping America from slid- ing into oblivion." On Trump's supposed tyrannical impulse: "If Trump were to indulge the Cae- saristic longings he's feared to have…the liberals in Congress wouldn't be nearly as feckless and cowardly in dealing with him as the conservatives have been in dealing with the tyran- nical impulses of Barack Obama. So yes, I do think that the separa- tion of powers would counter this decidedly, and work in Ameri- ca's favor, as long as the imperi- ous fascist troublemaker isn't a Democrat." Don Polson has called Red Bluff home since 1988. He can be reached by e-mail at donplsn@ yahoo.com. The way I see it Progressivism, tyranny, virtue (Trump) is inconsistent. And when you're the head of a global super power, inconsistency, unpredictability, those are dangerous things. They frighten your friends and they tempt your enemies. And so I would be very, very concerned. Sounding off A look at what readers are saying in comments on our website and on social media. Good call Tehama County, she should be charged as an adult Nora Nall: On girl charged with assault a er running with a knife at man with a gun Saw this little boy laying on the sidewalk - so glad he's okay Kelsey Sides: On boy hit by a vehicle at Walnut and Franklin Friday Don Polson OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Tuesday, August 9, 2016 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A6