Newspaper Page Text
The ADVANCE, December 6, 2023/Page 6A
Stye Aiiuancg
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
Western Happy Talk Is
a Dangerous Business
By Ben Shapiro
Happy talk is
dangerous.
It’s dangerous be
cause it gets people
killed. It leads people
to believe foolish
things. Out of idiotic
hopes and fatuous
dreams, leaders tend
to believe what they
want to believe. That
is precisely the op
posite of their job, particularly when it
comes to national security: Foreign policy
ought to be the preserve of cold-eyed men
and women capable of making hard but
correct decisions.
Unfortunately, politics tends to draw
those with starry visions — or at least cow
ards who will mask their own cowardice
with those starry visions.
It’s hard to tell which one President Joe
Biden is these days.
As Israel’s war against Hamas contin
ues — and make no mistake, it will con
tinue until Hamas is utterly destroyed —
Biden is starting to waver. Biden has made
many of the right sounds: He has expressed
support for deposing Hamas and has cor
rectly stated that Israel has a difficult task in
doing so while minimizing civilian casual
ties.
Yet now, prodded by a radical Left-
wing legacy media and young, daft staffers,
he seems to be wavering.
Biden seems to be increasingly falling
victim to the propagandistic efforts of the
legacy media, which promote four claims:
first, that Hamas isn’t as bad as it seems;
second, that Israel is much worse than it
seems; third, that Israel ought to make con
cessions to the Palestinian Authority in or
der to defeat Hamas; and fourth, that
Biden’s electoral prospects rely on believ
ing the first three claims.
All four claims are false.
First, the claim that Hamas isn’t all that
bad.
It’s astonishing to watch Holocaust de
nial form in real time, but we’re watching it
happen with regard to Hamas. The rewrit
ing of history has involved outright lies —
the he, for example, that Hamas didn’t kill
people at the Supernova Music Festival,
Israeli helicopters did — and obfuscation:
“do you have tape of Israeli women being
raped, or merely medical reports of their
broken pelvises?” But more often, it’s taken
the form of downplaying Hamas’ evil alto
gether, suggesting that now that Hamas is
releasing hostages, they must be a rational
actor. That’s absurd and ugly.
Then there’s claim No. 2: that Israel is
morally equivalent in some way to Hamas.
This claim usually takes the form of sug
gesting that Israel is “carpet bombing” Gaza
or “indiscriminate” in its use of firepower.
That’s ridiculous. Israel is protecting civil
ian evacuation routes Hamas is attacking;
Israel is giving weeks of warning before
striking sites; Israel is using “knock bombs”
to empty buildings; Israel is allowing
Hamas terrorists to merge into civilian
populations rather than killing too many
civilians. Israel is being more careful than
any army in modern history. It is also deal
ing with a terrorist group hiding in a heav
ily urban area. And that means civilian ca
sualties will be high, by necessity.
Then there’s claim No. 3: that Israel
ought to make concessions to the Palestin
ian Authority in order to somehow curb
Hamas. This is the claim of simpleton
Thomas Friedman, august foreign policy
columnist for the execrable New York
Times, who has never met an Israeli conces
sion he didn’t like. Today, he writes, “a re
vamped Palestinian Authority is the key
stone for the forces of moderation, coexis
tence and decency.” To believe this, one
must truly be an imbecile. The PA, from
the outset of Oslo, saw the Oslo Accords as
a Trojan Horse. Their leadership said as
much. Yasser Arafat said in 1994, “This
(Oslo) agreement, I am not considering it
more than the agreement which had been
signed between our Prophet Muhammad
and Quraish.” That agreement was the pre
lude to the slaughter of the Quraish tribe of
Mecca a few years after Mohammed signed
a false peace agreement.
Then there’s the final claim: that Biden
is in electoral danger specifically because of
Israel’s war to exterminate Hamas.
That, too, is a he. The data simply don’t
exist to suggest that Biden’s electoral trou
ble is because of the Gaza War. On Oct. 7,
Biden was riding at 44% in polls against
former President Donald Trump, accord
ing to the RealClearPolitics polling aver
age. Today, he’s riding at 45%. On Oct. 7,
he was at 40.5% approval; today, he’s at
40.4%. In other words, he’s just unpopular.
But perhaps Biden’s desperation will
cause him to fall prey to these lies. If so, he
won’t save himself, but he will damage
both Israel and the broader West. Because
if there’s one thing America’s enemies love,
it’s happy talk.
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 Roadtrip Computer
By Joe Phillips
Dear Me
Withdrawal.
I believe we've
become dependent
upon things to just
get along. The cell
phone seems able to
do about anything
when there is an ap
plication (app) for it.
We just finished a
two-week road trip, and right away I found
that my little laptop computer had pro
cessed it's last bit, or byte.
This computer is much smaller than a
regular laptop but could do everything I
needed it to do. The scratched case shows
it has not lived a pampered life. I've used it
all over the country to scratch out notes to
you and do family research.
Computers are temperamental critters.
They don't like being bounced around.
They have a hard drive that is like traveling
with a phonograph with the needle hover
ing millimeters above the grooves.
Many of the characters I've introduced
to you were found while traveling. Names
and locations are changed but the essence
of the individuals and their stories remain.
When it became clear that I would not
be able to write to you until I returned to
my home computer, there was a sense of
“withdrawal.” I didn't like it.
I can't whine too loudly because there
was a time I could not be away from my
Ham Radio for long and eventually in
stalled the rig in my car. That called for
another for the house, which was more
powerful, took up more room and was all
'round mo' better.
My parents used Ham Radio to keep
up with me.
Through radio I stayed in touch with
people I knew and chatted with every day.
In Ham Radio you get to know people very
well and might never meet them in person.
There are meetings via radio.
It works like this: Imagine being in a
dark room and unable to see who else is in
the room. But you come there every day
and you know folks by their voices. Ham
Radio is like that.
A wonderful thing about small towns is
the wealth of information.
In every town there is someone who
Please see Dear page 8A
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An Awakening on
the Subject of Sleep
Deprivation
You never
know what you
are going to dis
cover in the
process of
churning out
columns. And,
of course, I have
an obligation to
share with you
any new and ex
citing develop
ments, hoping that at your next cock
tail party or church social, you can
dazzle the crowd by quoting a factoid
you found on these pages and see the
look on their faces.
I have just read a report that the
Great State of Georgia is the second
most sleep-deprived state in the U.S.
This information is courtesy of the
medical marijuana experts at Leafwell.
com, a company that provides advice
on the medical use of cannabis, i.e.
marijuana. ( I did not inhale while
reading this report.)
The study examined the average
nightly sleep duration in all 50 states
and the number of searches by state for
more than 90 sleep-related terms on
the Internet such as, “insomnia,” “lack
of sleep,” and “I can’t sleep.” The report
doesn’t say so but I’m wondering if one
of the searches was, “How did some
one with a clipboard and a stopwatch
get in my bedroom?”
By the way, Georgia’s most
searched for sleep-related term on the
Internet was “sleep music” with an av
erage of 4,442 searches per month. Let
me suggest to our local insomniacs that
they simply click on “Ray Charles Rob
inson, of Albany, Georgia, sings ‘Geor
gia on my Mind.’” If that won’t send
you to dreamland, you likely aren’t
from around these parts.
The report says that Hawaii is the
most sleep-deprived state of all. That
doesn’t surprise me. Mother Nature
has not been kind to Hawaiians. A
wildfire in Lahaina on the island of
Maui last August killed at least 97
people and damaged or destroyed
more than 2,000 structures. Now, the
area is facing the potential of flash
flooding and the possibility of toxic
runoff into the ocean. These good peo
ple have every right to keep one eye
open at night.
But what in the name of Rip Van
Winkle makes Georgia the second
most sleep-deprived state in the na
tion? The Leafwell.com people say
that a short sleep duration is prevalent
in 38.2% of the state’s population. Ac
cording to my trusty abacus, that’s al
most 4 out of 10 of us. That also means
that more than 6 out of 10 of us hit the
pillow each night and go lights out.
That was the beloved Woman
Who Shared My Name. You had better
have told her “good night” as her head
was heading downward because when
it reached her pillow, she was gone. I
was one of the 4 who stayed awake all
night, trying to figure out how she
could go to sleep so effortlessly.
Before you ask, South Dakota is
the least sleep-deprived state in the na-
By Dick Yarbrough
tion. Not surprising. What else is there
to do in South Dakota but sleep?
Shovel snow? Another interesting note
about the Leafwell.com report: It is
one of the few times in any state rank
ings on any subject where Arkansas
and Mississippi aren’t dead last or close
to it. In this particular survey, Missis
sippi ranks 29th and Arkansas 32nd in
sleep deprivation. This is a good indi
cation that the locals don’t lose a lot of
sleep worrying about being last or
close to it in most every state ranking
published.
As for why we are so sleep-de
prived here in Georgia, I can only sur
mise it is brought on by a case of guilt.
We he awake at night wondering why
we have it so good compared to other
states. For example, our state has a
budget surplus today of over $5 billion.
By contrast, California is running a
$541 billion deficit and they are only
the 12th most sleep-deprived state. Go
figure.
We are blessed to have the Blue
Ridge Mountains to the north and the
Golden Isles to the south. We’ve got all
the pecans we can eat. And plenty of
sweet tea. The nation’s oldest state-
chartered university. Brasstown Bald
and the Callaway Gardens Butterfly
Center. Shrimp and grits. Movie stu
dios. Our cup runneth over.
Maybe knowing all of this will help
you sleep better tonight. I want you
sharp for your next cocktail party or
church social so that when somebody
drones on about the economy or the
weather, you can jump in and inform
them that according to medical mari
juana experts, there are more sleepy
people in Rhode Island than in South
Carolina. And then watch the look on
their faces. I get drowsy just thinking
about it.
You can reach Dick Yarbrough at
dick@dickyarbrough.com or at P.O. Box
725373, Atlanta. Georgia 31139
sl,t A&uancE
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R.E. "LID" LEDFORD, PUBLISHER
1924-1976
WILLIAM F. “BILL” LEDFORD SR., PUBLISHER
1976-2013
Publisher & Managing Editor:
WILLIAM F. LEDFORD JR.
Vice President:
THE LATE ROSE M. LEDFORD
Regional Editor:
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