am amazed at the front-page coverage Occupy Winston-Salem continues to receive ("Protesters decry corporate influence in politics," March 1). Never have so few (15-24 protesters), had so little to say and obtained so much media coverage. They do little more than complain that the rich and powerful have more wealth and power than they.
I recognize March 1 was a "national day of protest" and that there will be similar-sized protests in other cities. A better story might be the hundreds of larger meetings every weekend in churches, synagogues and temples in this community doing affirmative things to help the poor and down-spirited. That's happening across the country, too, but we won't see it on the front page of the Journal until Easter.
JOHN FONDA
Winston-Salem
Obama the Christian
Wow. Until the Journal published what Franklin Graham said about President Obama, I did not know that he came from three generations of Muslims ("Franklin Graham's troubling words," Feb. 27).
As a Christian, Obama is a testimony to the power of God in Jesus Christ to transform one's heritage and history and create a new person. Perhaps God has raised up this servant leader who had kinship with Muslims to now show us that in Christ, we are to love our brothers and sisters. Jesus, too, had kinship with Muslims and Jews through Father Abraham and Mother Sarah, centuries of generations.
Jesus was willing to suffer and die for those who did not know or love him, even those who hated him. In Christ's resurrection victory, God has overcome violence and defeats evil. President Obama has been a witness for standing firm against selfish and violent religious extremism, of which all religions are guilty.
For now, God has anointed our Christian president to exercise leadership in our world and to be a witness for those who have eyes to see.
THE REV. LAURA SPANGLER
PASTOR, LLOYD PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
Winston-Salem
Franklin Graham
Kudos to the Journal for calling out Franklin Graham in the editorial "Franklin Graham's troubling words" (Feb. 27). His remarks on live TV about President Obama might (and I emphasize might) have been tolerable if Graham had prefaced his remarks by saying: "This is only my personal opinion." The way he made his remarks sounded like he thought he was God, and Franklin Graham is far from being God.
Most people learn from prior mistakes; however, Graham seems to repeat his foot-in-mouth disease regarding President Obama. Yes, Graham is human, and he is entitled to make mistakes; however, most of us learn to be more cautious about repeating the same mistake over and over. Ministers especially need to avoid this type of adverse publicity, lest their qualifications to be ministers come into question.
Franklin Graham needs to go back to his Bible and read again: "Judge not, that ye be not judged."
DIANA WARD
Boone
Scapegoats
I really enjoyed reading Jason Ullner's column "It's time to stop bashing federal employees" (Feb. 29). It's a reminder that conservatives love their scapegoats.
Conservatives seem to have a dim view of Americans in general. When Americans lost their jobs in the Great Recession and nobody was hiring, conservatives said they were lazy — all eight million of them. When they had to turn to government aid to feed their families, conservatives wanted them all to be drug-tested. Which I might add, cost more than it was worth. Way to keep the deficit down.
Conservatives are always looking down their noses at women, immigrants, minorities, gay people, Muslims, federal employees — and their stereotypical complaints about them are almost always wrong.
WENDY MARSHALL
Winston-Salem
Finish the Thought
Briefly complete the sentence below and send it to us at letters@wsjournal.com. We'll print some of the results in a few days. Only signed entries, please, no anonymous ones.
"President Obama continues to be widely criticized because he …"
"President Obama continues to be widely criticized because he"...is President--just like you said.
ReplyDeleteWW, how dare you suggest that Obama is being criticized simply because he is President. Why I can think of several Presidents who were never criticized.
DeleteFor instance, the Father of Our Country:
... a hypocrite in public life, the world will be puzzled to decide whether you are an apostate or an impostor, whether you have abandoned good principles, or whether you ever had any?
Thomas Paine
See? Or how about Ike, our national daddy for 8 long years:
As an intellectual he bestowed upon the games of golf and bridge all the enthusiasm and perseverance that he withheld from books and ideas.
Emmet Hughes
Or maybe that monument to rectitude, Silent Cal:
How can they tell?
Dorothy Parker, on being told that Coolidge had died
Now if that isn't an outpouring of love, not to mention respect for the dead, I don't know what is. Everybody loved Thomas Jefferson:
He has all the characteristics of a dog except loyalty.
Sam Houston
And there is Andrew Jackson, who yanked national politics into the 19th century:
He is ignorant, passionate, hypocritical, corrupt and easily swayed by the basest men who surround him
John C. Calhoun
I didn't shoot Henry Clay and I didn't hang John Calhoun
Andrew Jackson on leaving office on things he had left undone
And how about Abraham Lincoln, the man who saved our nation and set free the slaves? Surely no one had a bad word to say about him:
Filthy Story-Teller, Despot, Liar, Thief, Braggart, Buffoon, Usurper, Monster, Ignoramus Abe, Old Scoundrel, Perjurer, Robber, Swindler, Tyrant, Field-Butcher, Land-Pirate.
Harper's Weekly
You might get the impression that the folks at Harpers had a disagreement or two with Honest Abe. But they didn't mean anything personal. And there were those who loved him like a brother:
God damn your god damned old hellfired god damned soul to hell god damn you and god damn your god damned family's god damned hellfired god damned soul to hell and good damnation god damn them and god damn your god damned friends to hell.
Peter Muggins, American citizen, letter to President Abraham Lincoln
So you can see that good presidents are always praised and criticism is reserved for the bad ones.
Sounds like scoundrels parade? Maybe the office should be left empty for 4 years?
DeleteBest idea I've heard in ages.
DeleteWe used to only see radical, left-wing, African American ministers pontificating the liberal, socialist agenda. However, recently, we're starting to see that several liberal, white ministers want to get on the bandwagon.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that many types of liberals ascribe to the premise that if you tell a lie long enough, people will believe it.
"Conservatives are always looking down their noses at women, immigrants, minorities, gay people, Muslims, federal employees — and their stereotypical complaints about them are almost always wrong." All those groups. At this rate we will run out of groups....at least the "good ones" that have the cultural seal of approval.
ReplyDeleteLTE #1: ". . . never have so few had so little to say."? HELLO-O-O-O? Can you say Republicans?
ReplyDeleteRepublicans were in the crowd of 15-24 people?
DeleteIronic that a group that is spot on on a problem that will continue to grow until it explodes is ridiculed because they cannot quite articulate it yet. That is for good reason, since it is a complicated problem that even usually intelligent people have a difficult time seeing, but the already huge imbalance in wealth is the most dangerous matter not on the table at the moment, and it isn't about envy or free stuff...it's about the basic function of the economy.
DeleteThe Tea Party had no such problem, since greed, selfishness, racism and sexism are ingrained in all homo sapiens.
La Sambra had me going with her comment. I pictured one lone Republican sneaking into their midst with a bootleg L.L. Bean catalogue. There will be an explosion alright, but it won't be the imbalance in wealth challenge. It will be the national debt/ devalued dollar bubble exploding. Someone's wealth at that moment will not matter much.
DeleteI'm not nearly as worried about the debt as I am about the deficit. The US can carry considerably more debt, but the only way to reduce it is to turn the deficit into a credit.
DeleteIf you follow the Keynesian model, that means that we need to increase taxes and cut spending without reducing economic growth...quite a trick since both private and public spending is required for economic growth.
Of course, the Keynesian model also holds that a stimulus of government spending can restart a sluggish economy. We don't really know if that would work, but to give it a chance, it would have to be 3 or 4 times as much as the most recent stimulus.
The chief alternative to the Keynesian model is the Chicago model, which pretty much says that the government cannot have much, if any, influence on the economy.
I tend to lean toward the Windy City. If you look at our economic history, there seems to be no real correlation between the economy and what the government was doing at any particular time. The biggest economic boom that we have had in recent years came during the Clinton administration and led to a balanced budget. Figure that out if you can...I can't.
“THERE IS NO MEANS OF AVOIDING THE FINAL COLLAPSE OF A BOOM BROUGHT ABOUT BY CREDIT EXPANSION. THE ALTERNATIVE IS ONLY WHETHER THE CRISIS SHOULD COME SOONER AS A RESULT OF A VOLUNTARY ABANDONMENT OF FURTHER CREDIT EXPANSION, OR LATER AS A FINAL OR TOTAL CATASTROPHE OF THE CURRENCY SYSTEM INVOLVED”
DeleteLudwig von Mises.
This is what has happened to us and as a result the pronouncements of Keynes and his ilk are dead. Europe was further down the Keynesian rabbit hole than America, but we are bound and determined to catch up. What are we doing here? Zero interest rates from the Fed, zero down at the car lot and furniture store and other places. We keep treating this economy with traditional bromides and won't recognise that we are in the midst of a financial collapse that is being held up only by unsustainable money printing. At some point it ends as even the amount of our national debt we owe ourselves has to be serviced just like the part that is owned by sovereign governments. Government is now influencing the economy in a bad way. It should be easing us to a more stable and healthy dollar instead of printing ever more which basically exports our inflation. It will end, and badly I fear.
How's that expansionary austerity thing working out in Europe?
DeleteCredit should be cheap when the economy is weak. Keynes and Friedman agreed on that one.
Hey Arthur, long time no talk to. Europe is beyond the tipping point as anything they do as a monetary union is like trying to poke your fingers in all the dam's holes. Credit can be cheap during traditional cyclycal downturns, but again, that is Not what we are experiencing. This is a full on financial collapse from over leveraging for too many decades. More credit won't solve this. We are rewarding debt over thrift--borrowing over investing. We have time to avoid Europe, but I have my doubts about political will.
DeleteHowdy. What you say is true of Greece I think, not so much the rest of the periphery. The Europeans created a monetary union without concurrent political and fiscal integration. What's good fiscal policy for Germany is not necessarily good for Spain...those countries that are able to print their own currency can just devalue to make their exports more competitive, but not so with countries that are on the Euro. They have to go through a painful contraction, which isn't even good for debt reduction, as their economies are shrinking too fast (as a result of austerity) to support their current debt loads. To say nothing of the devastating human cost in the meantime.
DeleteSome good points in there. Devaluing currency and beggaring a little growth from trading partners is also called a currency war, which we are engaged in now. Italy may get through this, but Spain and probably next off will be Portugal. Greece has no way out and there is not enough austerity to be had for them. They litterally have almost nothing going for themselves in the modern world. I'll bet you a Krispy Kreme that within one year, some Greek pol comes on the scene and in full view of cameras and their parliament- takes a copy of the EU Treaty, the list of Greek debt obligations etc - and tears the whole thing in pieces thereby telling Germany and Goldman Sachs to stick it. That pol will be a national hero, win election for life and put Greece back on the Drachma where they belong. It will be hard on them for a while but nothing like decades of hardship under northern Europe ( read Germany).
DeleteObama wants to be like Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, and Ronald Reagan. I'd compare him to Jimmy Carter-with the edge going to Carter.
ReplyDeleteNobel Peace Prize two weeks after taking office?Talk about Affirmative Action!
DeleteIn a USA Today / Gallup Poll conducted October 16–19 with a margin of error of +/-3%, 61% of American adults polled responded that they thought Obama did not deserve to win the prize, while 34% responded that he did.
Excellent point and post Bucky. I, for one, am glad to see you back in the forum.
Delete