Newspaper Page Text
The ADVANCE, July 26, 2023/Page 6A
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OPINIONS
“I honor the man who is willing to sink
Half his repute for the freedom to think,
And when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak,
Will risk t’other half for the freedom to speak.”
-James Russell Lowell
editorials
Ukraine, Inner Cities,
and Character Attacks
By Ben Shapiro
This weekend,
Tucker Carlson inter
viewed a bevy of Re
publican presidential
candidates in Iowa.
Despite the fact that
polls show that nearly
zero Americans con
sider the war in
Ukraine to be a top
voting priority Carl
son spent a dispro
portionate share of his time grilling the
candidates over their position on Ukraine.
He took the position that favoring addi
tional aid to Ukraine in its defensive war
against Russia amounted to taking money
out of the hands of poverty-stricken Ameri
cans in inner cities; as he asked Mike Pence,
“Every city in the United States has become
much worse over the past three years. Our
economy has degraded. The suicide rate
has jumped. Public filth and disorder and
crime have exponentially increased. And
yet your concern is that the Ukrainians, a
country most people can’t find on a map,
who’ve received tens of billions of U.S. tax
dollars, don’t have enough tanks?”
This same line of logic was utilized over
the weekend by Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio,
who spoke at the Turning Point USA con
ference in Florida. “There’s no issue that
these people with the Ukrainian flags in
their bio are more obsessed with, they call it
entitlement reform but what they’re saying
is they want to cut Social Security... so we
can send more money to Volodymyr Zelen-
skyy in Ukraine,” Vance said. Never mind
the fact that this is patently untrue: Those
with Ukraine flags in their Twitter bios are
highly likely to favor massive governmental
expenditures domestically. Never mind the
fact that Vance himself used to be a propo
nent of entitlement reform.
The true concern is the absolutely spe
cious link between a hawkish foreign policy
and apathy about domestic concerns.
Ukraine has become a litmus test not be
cause many Americans care about it as a top
issue; it has become a top issue because
many commentators and politicians now
make the argument that if you wish to
spend a dollar in Ukraine to fend off Rus
sian predation, you must be unconcerned
about the suffering of American citizens
here at home.
There are several problems with this
logic.
First off, the basic notion that pouring
government money into inner cities some
how cures them of their problems is belied
by 60 years of trying just that strategy, to
massive failure. In most cases, we’d be bet
ter off not spending government dollars on
boondoggle programs, no matter where
else we spend money.
Then there’s the argument that isola
tionist foreign policy somehow results in
greater American prosperity — that Ameri
can citizens would be better off if we simply
allowed Russia to march into Kyiv. This ar
gument is disconnected from reality. It has
no logical limits — why not let China take
Taiwan or Russia take Poland? What’s the
limiting principle? But it also ignores the
fact that American citizens have real inter
ests abroad: The Ukraine war has disrupted
supply lines in resources ranging from plati
num and titanium to grain and oil; Russia’s
routine threats against its neighbors and
expansionism in regions ranging from Af
rica to Syria threaten American allies and
strengthen America’s enemies, who further
threaten American economic and security
interests; China, buoyed by a soft Western
response, would presumably move toward a
full-scale Taiwan invasion.
Hawkishness is not allied to domestic
poverty; in fact, hawkishness in the after-
math of World War II helped protect the
safety of the oceans and the skies, thus lead
ing to the greatest outpouring of prosperity
in history. But regardless of what you think
of America’s support for Ukraine, it is dis
honest to suggest that those who seek to
fund Ukraine are universally apathetic
about their fellow Americans. That implica
tion is yet another symptom of our broken
and polarized politics, in which nuanced
arguments are ignored in favor of character
attacks.
Ben Shapiro, 39, is a graduate of UCLA and
Harvard Law School, host of "The Ben Shapiro
Show," and co-founder of Daily Wire+. He is a
three-time New York Times bestselling author: his
latest book is "The Authoritarian Moment: How
The Left Weaponized America's Institutions
Against Dissent." To find out more about Ben
Shapiro and read features by other Creators
Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the
Creators Syndicate website at www.creators,
com.
COPYRIGHT 2023 CREATORS.COM.
The Enamel Bucket
By Joe Phillips
Dear Me
Kicked the
bucket.
I toed at a piece
of rusting metal
while exploring the
back yard of my
grandparent's home.
There is nothing
of material worth
there.
With a metal detector, I scanned the
area where my grandmother's clothes line
was hung between weather saplings.
Nothing. I speculated that perhaps a coin
or rare button had escaped.
She searched pockets for anything of
value. If she found a coin in my grandfa
ther's overalls, she saved it in a Mason jar.
This deteriorating piece of metal
bucket retained the connection point for
the bail. Specks of interior enamel were
evident.
Enameled containers were made by
coating steel items with powdered glass
and firing them at high temperature.
Enamel pails are nearly impervious to
anything you want to put in them. Enamel
kitchen tables and sinks are still popular,
as well as enamel cast iron cookware.
The enamel made the bucket easy to
clean, and when new was probably white
on the inside with a red ring about mid
way up.
There were reinforcing rings near the
top to prevent the bucket from bending
from the weight of milk. A gallon of milk
weighs over 8 pounds.
My grandfather used the enamel
bucket as his milk bucket on twice-daily
trips to the barn to relieve his milk cow.
He favored Jersey cows and owned a
line of them. They produced all the milk
they could use with cream for churning
butter. He often traded cream and butter
with neighbors or sold it to Mr. Bomar, a
distant relative who was a traveling ped
dler.
I followed my grandfather up the hill,
past his pig pen, to the barn. There is
nothing left of it. I can't even recall where
it stood.
The corn crib was nearby, with the
lower walls covered by sheets of roofing
tin to prevent mice and rats from using
the crib as their pantry.
Barn cats helped, and he was prone to
catch rat snakes and toss them into the
crib.
After retirement, he got out of the
milking business, and the old milk bucket
found other uses. It was used while pick
ing blackberries, muscadines and huckle
berries.
I recall the bucket holding a clump of
wild violets moved from a spot near the
well.
There was nothing of the bucket
worth saving except the memory of it;
watching Papa fill the bucket and squeez
ing out a stream of warm milk at a waiting
cat.
The memory of the old bucket was
enough.
joenphillips@yahoo.com
An open letter to Georgia’s
public schoolteachers
I can’t be
lieve I am writ
ing a back-to-
school letter to
you in July.
That’s because
I can’t believe
you are start
ing a new
school year in
July. Somehow,
that doesn’t
seem right. Back in the good ol’ days
- which look better and better as I get
older and older - school always began
right after Labor Day.
Even today, I dread the thought of
Labor Day because it reminds me of
the years of having to get up early, put
on shoes and socks and freshly-ironed
clothes and trek off to school. Once
there, I waited for recess to come and
then how long until lunch and, after
that, wondering if the school day
would ever end so I could get home
and take off my shoes and socks. And,
of course, there was homework. Al
ways the homework, which greatly
interfered with more important pur
suits like playing ball or riding my
bike.
In spite of this, Miss Dent and
Miss Bolton and Jimmie Lou Hop-
good, among others, managed to cor
ral my wandering mind and taught me
how to read and write, add and sub
tract, spell multisyllable words and to
absorb a fair amount of history. That
is what schoolteachers do. They did it
back in my time and you do it today.
The difference in those days and
now, in my opinion, is two-fold: Par
ents in my generation, for the most
part, came out of rural settings where
education was not a priority. Plowing,
planting and harvesting were. They
wanted their children to get the edu
cation they had been denied.
Second, the teaching profession
was held in high regard by society. I
have a friend who says that while the
U.S. Constitution may say we are in
nocent until proven guilty, it didn’t
work that way when we were in school.
If the schoolteacher said you were
guilty, chances were your parents ac
cepted that verdict, much to your dis
comfort.
What has happened to parental
support since those days, I’m not sure.
Perhaps you know. I do know, and I
think you would agree, that where
parents are involved in a positive way
in their child’s educational develop
ment, the results are positive. The
problem is that many times that in
volvement is not about their child’s
progress but about political and social
issues. We’ve all seen the pictures of
parents screaming and waving signs at
each other over things like masks in
the schoolroom during the CO-
VID-19 pandemic. How is that a posi
tive influence on a child’s behavior?
Now you are caught in the cross
fire between competing political phi
losophies on the issue of diversity,
equity and inclusion. In my not-so-
humble opinion, those discussions
By Dick Yarbrough
belong in the home, and you should
not be held responsible for doing what
the parents should be doing. How
ever, no matter what you do regarding
that subject - or what the politicians
and special interest groups force on
you - it won’t please a lot of people,
and then we will get the predictable
blather about “failing public schools,”
which is not your fault. It is the fault of
society.
If there is a failure here, it is mine
for not doing a better job of getting it
into people’s heads that public schools
are a microcosm of society. My son -
who is one of you, by the way - has
told me many times you can’t shut the
schoolhouse door on society’s prob
lems. If a child is hungry, abused, has
apathetic parents or no parents at all,
is transient, can’t speak English or is a
gang member, it doesn’t matter. You
are supposed to educate them anyway.
Rather than address these prob
lems directly, the solution for many
politicians is to give tax breaks to par
ents (mostly white, well-to-do Repub
licans, although we don’t know that
for sure since the information is not
publicly available even though it in
volves our tax dollars) to send their
kids to private schools that don’t have
to abide by the same rules you do. If
the child doesn’t play by their rules,
they are sent back to - guess where?
And you have no choice but to take
them back.
But you are willing to take all the
slings and arrows because we both
know you will have a positive and last
ing impact on some child’s life. I sus
pect everyone reading this with us to
day can name a schoolteacher who
made a difference in their own life.
Again, that is what teachers do. Yours
is a noble profession. And I thank you
for doing it.
You can reach Dick Yarbrough at
dick@dickyarbrough.com or at P.O. Box
725373, Atlanta, Georgia 31139.
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