Newspaper Page Text
4A
OPINION
Sttnes
gainesvilletimes.com
Thursday, December 13, 2018
Shannon Casas Editor in Chief | 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
Smallwood
was good, fair
public servant
Very seldom does a public servant spend 22
years catching flak from a fired-up audience for
little money, no fanfare and numerous criticism.
Don Smallwood has been Hall County Planning
Commission Chair and deserves our plaudits for
a job well done. He was always fair and let each
side have their say before a final vote was taken.
If you see Don on his jet ski going up the Tennes
see River, on the golf course, at church or wher
ever, tell him thank you.
Jack C. Bell
Gainesville
Thanks for special section on
county’s 200th anniversary
Kudos to The Times’ staff for your celebra
tion in the Sunday edition of Hall County’s 200th
anniversary.
I found it to be skillfully written, carefully
researched and an informative read.
One of our society’s ills is a sense of not being
connected to where we live.
Since Hall County is my adopted home I enjoy
learning about its history. And as a retired journal
ist I must point out that such articles underscore
the critical importance of a local newspaper.
Randall Murray
Gainesville
Fallout from family breakdown
As France is gripped by
civil disorder, many com
mentators identify, quite
correctly, as the culprit the
outsized burden that France’s
bloated welfare state places
on its citizens.
According to a recent
report from the Organization
for Economic Cooperation
and Development, the high
est tax burden in the industri
alized world is in France — 46.1 percent
of GDP.
In the United States, it is 27 percent,
which includes taxes paid at all levels of
government — federal, state and local.
Welfare state spending in France
is 32 percent of GDP, almost double
that of the U.S., meaning that 1 out of
every 3 dollars generated by the French
economy is captured by the government
and redistributed into social/welfare
spending.
But let’s recall that all this government
was put in place in the name of making
life better for France’s citizens.
There’s plenty of analysis regarding
the French situation, as there is in our
own country, about how to streamline
and reform government programs and
deliver the same quality of services at
a reduced spending and tax burden on
citizens.
But these discussions invariably fail
to look at the full scope of human reality
at play.
The vast expansion of the welfare
state, both in Europe and in the United
States, occurred in tandem with a weak
ening of the family. And
weakening of the family
generally occurs in an envi
ronment of weakening of
religion.
When I speak and tell
audiences that today 4 in 10
babies in the United States
are born to unwed mothers,
compared with less than 1
in 10 babies 50 years ago, I
hear gasps.
But in France, out of wedlock births
stand at 6 in 10.
Not surprisingly, a recent survey by
Pew Research of 34 European countries
shows France to be one of the least
religious.
Eleven percent in France say religion
is very important in the their lives; 22
percent say they attend religious ser
vices at least monthly; 11 percent say
they pray daily; and 11 percent say they
believe in God with absolute certainty.
This is in stark contrast to the United
States, where 49 percent say religion is
very important to them; 36 percent say
they attend religious services at least
weekly; 55 percent say they pray daily;
and 75 percent say they believe in God.
Only 47 percent of French people
say marriage infidelity is morally unac
ceptable compared with 84 percent of
Americans.
So although the hold of Christianity
on the American public has weakened
over the years, compared with France it
remains a quite strong force.
This has important bearing on the wel
fare state crisis, at home and abroad.
As religion weakens, family struc
ture weakens, and as family structure
weakens, government strengthens and
grows. Where people once looked to
their parents to transmit values, love and
care, increasingly they are looking to
government.
The problem is that it doesn’t work.
Traditional family and marriage
reflect eternal values that cannot be
replaced by government. These values
— where husband and wife join in holy
matrimony, embodying and transmitting
truth that is greater than their own per
sonal, egotistical proclivities — translate
to children, learning, work, creativity
and productivity.
In 1958,82 percent of Americans said
religion can solve “most or all of today’s
problems” and 7 percent said religion is
“old-fashioned and out of date.” By 2015,
57 percent said religion can solve our
problems and 30 percent said religion is
“out of date.”
Over this period of time, American
family structure significantly deterio
rated and our welfare state, although
still nowhere near what’s happening in
France, has become huge, bloated, and a
major fiscal drain on the nation.
We surely should work to streamline
and reform the welfare state.
But we shouldn’t lose perspective that
the core problem is the integrity of the
traditional family. This is where our
answers lie.
Star Parker is an author and president
of the Center for Urban Renewal and
Education and a columnist for Creators.
STAR PARKER
www.urbarcure.org
It only seems like you
got all 5.IB robocalls
THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE EDITORIAL BOARD
Tribune News Service
“Two years from now, spam will be solved.”
—Bill Gates, then chairman of Microsoft Corp.,
assuring World Economic Forum participants in
Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 23,2004, that software
engineers would find ways to eliminate spam
emails by2006.
Bill Gates’ unfulfilled promise pops to mind
with each day’s emailed offers of a deal on
diodes from Taiwan, or a share of an inheritance
in Ghana.
Fifteen years after the software wunderkind
violated what should have been Machiavelli’s
rule of prophecy — Predict only that which
already has occurred — the robocall menace
stalks virtually every one of us. So we were
alarmed if not surprised to read the Tribune’s
Business story reporting that during November,
5.1 billion robocalls were sprayed at Americans.
That’s nearly 2,000 per second. And no, you didn’t
receive all or even half of them.
The news story reported efforts by Illinois’
Lisa Madigan and 37 other attorneys general to
give Americans “simple ways to avoid annoy
ing and invasive robocalls.” The AGs’ coalition
has met with several major telecom companies
and pushed the carriers to “quickly develop and
implement technology” that would identify and
block robocalls.
Attorney General Madigan, our heart bleeds
for you and the well-intentioned 37. For as many
years as you’ve been attorney general (almost
16), we’ve been cataloging pledges that this or
that initiative would diminish annoying and
invasive contacts from scammers, spammers,
cold callers, robocallers and pretend widows
in London who want to share the loot with an
accomplice.
So far, we’ve seen nothing from these efforts
but failure, failure, failure. And no wonder. The
ingenuity of those who annoy and invade is thus
far boundless. The number of fraudulent calls
has skyrocketed with the perfection of spoof
ing, in which robocallers hijack your area code
or local prefix so you’ll think this might be the
pharmacist calling, when in fact it’s Andrei in
Budapest.
The worst of the robocallers prey on people,
particularly older people, with special avarice at
this time of year: In the spirit of (insert holiday
here), surely you’ll want to help the little ones by
making a donation to our cause...
The Federal Trade Commission calculates that
the average victim of phone frauds last year lost
an average of $700. The Federal Communica
tions Commission keeps threatening to make a
difference. Yet the number of robocalls contin
ues to rise.
We hope the attorneys general succeed where
other public officials have failed. Much as we
hope that the humans behind robocalling will
reform and stop phoning.
In each case we’ll applaud success when we
hear it. Or rather, when we don’t.
To submit letters: Send by email to letters@
gainesvilletimes.com (no attached files) or use
the contact form at gainesvilletimes.com. Include
name, hometown and phone number; letters never
appear anonymously. Letters are limited to one per
writer in a month’s time on topics of public interest
and may be edited for content and length (limit of
500 words). Letters may be rejected from readers
with no ties to Northeast Georgia or that address
personal, business or legal disputes. Letters not
the work of the author listed or with material not
properly attributed will be rejected. Submitted
items may be published in print, electronic or other
forms. Letters and other commentary express the
opinions of the authors and not of The Times.
" WWKXH) RflUDKR 4 DICING W W AREONE THING...
BUT EWING IN M BORDER WAll? VIHATAM LA MORON?"
News Journal
£j«W< <ort\/i»iarWfe«f4«on'a
® c reatoTs •<*** 2^*
ANDY MARLETTE I Creators Syndicate
Next economic crash could be dire
Growing up during the
Great Recession, when
Gainesville City Schools
could not afford textbooks
or even sufficient tissue
paper for that matter, I
am skeptical of overspecu
lated markets and wary of
bubbles (hint: our economy
is full of them).
If you’ve actually been
watching stock prices, you’ll
see that many, particularly
Silicon Valley Big Data companies, are
going haywire right now. This is not a
surprise, given that they are built upon
sand and fraudulent behavior, but it is
something that does not bode well for
our national economy, to put it mildly.
It is also clear that while employment
is on the rise, the quality of many jobs
throughout the country, particularly rel
ative to huge increases in cost of living,
has created a vice grip on many working
class families in the country.
Let me put it more frankly than that
even. When the next crash comes, and
you bet it will and I believe in 2019,1 am
deeply concerned about the preservation
of the social fabric of this country (the
unraveling of which will then leave us
vulnerable to international bad actors).
Social indicators are already look
ing grim, and our economy, at least on
paper, is booming. But what happens
when the economy tanks?
If people hate each other so much
now, if places are being shot up every
time I check the news, if racial groups
and political ideologies are showing open
disgust and hatred toward one another,
what happens when people lose their
jobs, their houses, their livelihoods?
Before 2008, people liked each other a
heck of a lot better than now. What hap
pens, with the next crash, now that our
skeletons are all out of the closet? What
happens when the chickens
of societal failure to root
out corruption and reckless
greed finally comes home
to roost? What happens now
that the Pandora’s Box of
hatred that had been opened
up by Trump’s (and Hillary
Clinton’s with her “deplora-
bles comment,” to be sure)
historically negative 2016
campaign?
I hope I’m wrong. I really
do. But to be honest, I don’t think I am.
Some of the top minds in the world,
that being the professors at Harvard
University where I recently earned a
degree, are concerned about what the
near future holds. The tech bubble looks
ready to pop. As do student loans. As do
housing markets in major cities through
out the world.
Apathy, ambivalence, and, frequently,
pure hostility seem to dominate our soci
ety. So I ask again, what happens when
the next crash comes?
When it happens, it will be hard. But
from the wreckage I hope that we build
a new sort of national understanding.
As Jimmy Carter, reviled as he is by
some for whatever reason, said during
his presidency in the late ’70s: there is a
problem with the soul of our country.
While we have been taught that we
can buy our problems away, I will go on
the record as saying there is nothing that
is further from the truth.
When the next crash comes, I hope
that instead of chaos, there will be an
understanding that this bipolar boom-
bust cycle of overspeculation and painful
contraction is a cancer to our nation and
to our world.
I hope that we will use this as an
opportunity to let the poison out of our
system. I hope we will realize that the
money, money, money mentality is only
good when that money is used for some
thing meaningful. Things for things’ sake
do not buy happiness.
While we should not glorify the hard
ships of poverty, we should remember
the dignity of the working class and
should abhor greed, even and especially
when it comes wrapped up in a designer
suit. Or designer uniform gray shirts, as
the case may be.
In this era of worshiping the tech
demi-gods and financial prophets, when
their reckoning finally comes I hope that
we will remember that there is only one
God, and his name is not Zuckerberg,
Bezos, Musk or Schwartzman.
Loving Gainesville and Georgia as I
do, I hope that we are insulated from the
effects of what looks almost certain to
happen.
This is a special region and I believe
once Silicon Valley’s bubble bursts, along
with many others, there will be leagues
of opportunities for smaller communi
ties around the country to finally claim
their slice of the pie. Even then, taking a
page from our hometown hero Deshaun
Watson’s book, I hope we stay humble
and hungry, never smug and compla
cent. And my ultimate hope is that we
will remember, when dark days come,
that there will always be something to be
thankful for.
Community, family, values, faith,
tolerance mutual understanding, love
our shared humanity despite superficial
differences. Let us embrace these values
and reject the primal, predatory greed
that has emboldened the powerful for
far too long.
Our leaders didn’t learn our lesson
last time. I hope and pray that this time,
when the next crash comes, they finally
will.
Will Morris IV is a graduate of Gainesville
High School and Harvard University.
WILL MORRIS IV
She Stines
EDITORIAL BOARD
Founded Jan. 26,1947
345 Green St., Gainesville, GA 30501
gainesvilletimes.com
General Manager
Norman Baggs
Editor in Chief
Shannon Casas