Newspaper Page Text
7A
OPINION
®he £ntics
gainesvilletimes.com
Friday, October 26, 2018
Shannon Casas Director of Content | 770-718-3417 | scasas@gainesvilletimes.com
Submit a letter: letters@gainesvilletimes.com
The First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right
of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
LITERS
Socialism is
Symptom of a larger issue
not the gospel
In Thursday’s Times, the editorial cartoon
by Andy Marlette depicted a gun toting, Bible
holding, white, male conservative and a young
female. In the first scene, the conservative
screams that leftists are preaching socialist
ideals. In the second scene the young woman
warns “just wait until you read what Jesus said
in the Bible.”
This cartoon is very important because we
see that many Christians have been taught inac
curately about Jesus and his ministry. His min
istry is not political.
Should we be surprised? Even some of
the disciples who walked with him wanted,
expected, a political king who would restore
the nation of Israel. Not until Pentecost and the
indwelling of the Holy Spirit did they come to a
full realization of who Jesus was and what his
ministry was. Instead of an earthly ruler, Jesus
was a suffering servant. He was God in the
flesh. He was the perfect sacrifice that would
atone for the sins of all who would repent and
place their faith and trust in his finished work.
Today there are many preachers, pastors
and priests that teach a false doctrine that
perverts the gospel of Jesus and him cruci
fied. Instead, they transform his ministry into
a political action gospel of social justice. They
seek redistribution of wealth with the aim of
equal prosperity for all. He never promised
equal outcomes in this life. He told us that the
poor we would always have with us. What he
did promise is eternal life through repentance
and faith in him.
Jesus left us with two commands. First to
love the Lord our God. The second is to love our
neighbor as ourselves. Our ability to do each of
those comes from the power of the indwelling
Holy Spirit.
The love we show to one another is an out
pouring of the gracious love God has extended
to us. We will never solve poverty. We will
never feed all the hungry. Even governments
can not do those things. What we can do, as
individual believers, is to do justice, love mercy
and walk humbly with our Lord.
Thomas Day
Buford
Replay only the good movies in
the theater of your mind
You may be familiar with Tony Robbins, a
motivational speaker, author and personal
development coach who has gained worldwide
prominence after 40 years of sharing his you-
can-achieve-anything message.
I’m not a huge Tony Robbins fan. He’s not my
guru. Never heard him speak, read just one of
his mega-seller books. Yet there’s one “nugget”
of his I benefit from daily.
Directing a seminar, he asked participants:
“How many of you have seen a movie you
didn’t like?”
Of course, everyone raised a hand. Watching
movies we don’t like is a universal experience.
During the worst ones, we may leave the the
ater or cut off the TV halfway through the story.
Next, Tony asked: “How many of you went
back to see those bad movies again and again?”
This time there was not a show of hands.
Then Robbins made his point: “Of course you
don’t go back to see awful movies in your neigh
borhood cinemas. But you do frequently replay,
in the theater of your mind, bad experiences
you struggled through. You remember the boss
who made your life miserable, and you vividly
picture scary scenes in her office. You practi
cally re-live a terrifying car accident that hospi
talized you for weeks. You get angry visualizing
a close friend who lied to you.”
Switching to a positive approach, Robbins
suggested: “From now on, never replay the bad
movies, those personal and professional experi
ences that shattered your stability. They were
distressing enough when they happened. Why
give them a chance to disturb you and disap
point you again and again?” He added: “Replay
only the good movies, day after day.”
That’s a magnificent strategy, one I have
shared with many people — because I have put
his suggestion to use repeatedly. I don’t replay
what doctors said to me twice: “You have can
cer.” But I do recall the marvelous physicians,
nurses, radiation therapists, and other health
professionals who brought me through those
frightening ordeals successfully.
Again, I could replay repeatedly that grief-
filled day of my father’s funeral. He was my
role model and my life coach. I loved him
dearly, lost him way too early. However, my
morale remains high when I think of him. How?
I replay mental movies of him taking me to the
river as a small child and laughing with me as
I threw rocks a few feet out from the shore.
Together, we both cheered the small splashes.
I replay him traveling to my graduate school
commencement, though Ohio University was
hundreds of miles from his Mississippi home.
In our turbulent era, we need this affirma
tive mindset. Daily, you and I are bombarded
by shocking events that could demoralize us,
even happening in our revered institutions:
homes, schools and churches. Watch the inci
dents once, discard them, and then replay in
your mind the joyful movies that enrich your
spirit and energize your life.
Bill Lampton
Gainesville
To submit letters: Send submissions by email to
letters@gainesvilletimes.com or from the form at
www.gainesvilletimes.com. Please include your
full name, hometown and phone number.
Associated Press
Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman addresses the Future Investment
Initiative conference, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Wednesday, Oct. 24.
The biggest mis
take the Trump
administration
made in the Jamal
Khashoggi case
occurred while
Khashoggi was
still alive: letting
Saudi Arabia’s
crown prince, JONAH GOLDBERG
Mohammed bin goldbergcolumn@
Salman, think he gmail com
could get away
with something so heinous — and so hei
nously stupid.
But the bell was rung, as it were, and
there is no way to unring it.
The Saudis surely made every
thing worse by lying about it. But the
aftermath is such a complicated mess
because it illuminates decisions made
long before Prince Mohammed’s goons
brought a bone saw to Istanbul.
It’s a bit analogous to the assassina
tion of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir
to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire. That murder sparked World
War I, yet the war was about far more
than the murder of a single official.
Look at the situation from the Saudi
perspective. The U.S. has turned a blind
eye to far larger horrors, including the
Saudi-led war in Yemen. Prince Moham
med’s forces reportedly target civilian
centers and tolerate rape, torture and
the conscription of children. The Iranian
side is just as guilty.
Saudi Arabia also executes about 150
people a year, mostly by beheading and
occasionally by stoning. In recent years,
several women were executed for prac
ticing “witchcraft” or “sorcery.” Yet the
U.S. doesn’t say boo about that.
Instead, the Saudis have gotten two
mutually reinforcing messages from the
White House. First, President Trump has
repeatedly said that every country has a
sovereign right to protect its own distinct
culture.
Well, in Saudi Arabia’s distinct culture,
rulers can do whatever they can get
away with, particularly with regard to
their own citizens. From Prince Moham
med’s perspective, Khashoggi — a
longtime supporter of the Muslim Broth
erhood and an operator in the Saudi
court — was an obstacle to reform and
a tool of his enemies. That he had a U.S.
tourist visa and a column in the Washing
ton Post didn’t change that. It made him
a greater threat.
The second message is that Saudi
Arabia is our ally. This isn’t new, but the
Trump administration has taken it to
new, personalized extremes. So long as
Saudi Arabia helps contain Iran, softens
on Israel and keeps the oil flowing out
(and the weapons in), they can have a
free hand.
To paraphrase FDR, the man who
forged the U.S.-Saudi alliance, the Saudis
may be SOBs, but they’re our SOBs.
The Saudis are also getting a third
message, one that is coming more from
the world of NGOs, op-ed pages and Wall
Street than from the West Wing: Saudi
Arabia needs to reform its economy and
culture.
Indeed, Prince Mohammed jumped
the line of succession to do precisely
that. It’s thanks to him that women are
finally allowed to drive in the kingdom.
One of the more cynical talking points
among those calling for new leadership
in Saudi Arabia is the idea that reform
ers in backward authoritarian nations
don’t do terrible things.
The shahs were reformers, support
ing Western-style modernization and
women’s rights. They were also brutal
dictators.
Mikhail Gorbachev was a reformer.
But I would be stunned if he’d never had
anyone murdered. Regimes founded
on mistaken principles have few nice
options when seeking to reform.
The point isn’t that the ends justify
the means, but that when dealing with
murderous regimes, the choice is
often between the more tolerable of
murderers.
Some of the most outraged American
voices in the Khashoggi affair had no
problem working with Iran’s brutal
regime. The Obama echo chamber made
realist arguments about the nature of
reform under the mullahs, but these
same people are now morally aghast at
our realpolitik with the House of Saud.
The Turks are even worse. Along
with Iran, Turkey is competing with
Saudi Arabia for regional dominance,
and Khashoggi’s death is merely a pro
paganda tool for them. The Turks are
brilliantly feeding evidence in drips and
drabs to an indignant Western press.
I get the indignation, but has no one
followed the mass arrests and periodic
assassinations of journalists under Presi
dent Recep Tayyip Erdogan? Do people
really believe the Turkish tyrant and
NATO ally — who calls journalists the
“gardeners of terrorism” — is sincerely
offended? Should we call for Erdogan to
step down? Why not?
I have no good idea for what we should
do next, because the problem isn’t really
the killing of Khashoggi. As outrageous
as it is, Khashoggi’s murder is a symptom
of a far longer series of mistakes.
Jonah Goldberg is an editor-at-large of
National Review Online and a visiting
fellow at the American Enterprise
Institute.
USA BENSON I Washington Post Writers Group
Tensions boiling over into violence
Newsday
Amid the continued degradation of
our national discourse and the corrosive
politics of demonization, we have hit a
new low.
Violent rhetoric is being matched by
acts of violence. And that’s terrifying.
Bombs were sent to former President
Barack Obama, former presidential con
tender Hillary Clinton, former Attorney
General Eric Holder, former CIA Direc
tor John Brennan at CNN, and billionaire
philanthropist and Democratic donor
George Soros, a target of House Republi
can Campaign Committee attack ads.
This cannot continue.
It is tempting to make a direct con
nection to the inflammatory words and
endorsements of violence by President
Donald Trump, who has attacked ver
bally or on Twitter every one of the
bomb recipients. But that connection
might not turn out to be the case. What is
certain is that he has created a climate
in which we are not shocked that the
president’s rhetoric could lead to this
moment. That’s atrocious.
Trump’s record on this score is long.
In the 2016 campaign, he encouraged
one crowd to “knock the crap out” of
demonstrators, promising to pay legal
fees. He has bashed CNN as an enemy
of the people, and last week celebrated
Montana Rep. Greg Gianforte for body-
slamming a reporter last year; Gianforte
pleaded guilty to an assault charge.
Along the way, this climate has given
others license to say whatever they want
about anyone. At a rally Tuesday, Texas
GOP Sen. Ted Cruz responded to a crowd
chant by joking that Democratic oppo
nent Rep. Beto O’Rourke could share a
prison cell with Clinton. That’s not funny.
It might turn out that the bombs were
the isolated work of one deranged indi
vidual, like the abominable shooting at a
Republican congressional baseball team
practice last year. That wouldn’t absolve
anyone who has contributed to this tin-
derbox atmosphere. It certainly doesn’t
excuse the atrocious conjecture Wednes
day from the far right that the bombs
were fake and the work of Democrats
to create sympathy among voters in the
upcoming midterms. “Fake news, fake
bombs” signs turned up within hours at
political rallies.
Trump said the right things in the
White House on Wednesday afternoon.
“In these times we have to unify,” he
said, adding that political violence has no
place in the United States. Now he has to
show he means that, every day. No more
vitriol at rallies. No more false accusa
tions aimed at political opponents. No
more celebrations of violence.
Words matter. And the consequences
get scarier.
She Stines
EDITORIAL BOARD
Founded Jan. 26,1947
345 Green St., Gainesville, GA 30501
gainesvilletimes.com
General Manager
Norman Baggs
Director of Content
Shannon Casas
Community member
Brent Hoffman
