Mountain Views News          Saturday, March 14, 2015

B7

OPINION 

Mountain Views-News Saturday, March 14, 2015 


TO BE PC OR NOT TO BE PC - 

THat is the confusion

Mountain 
Views

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Susan Henderson

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CONTRIBUTORS

CoCo Lasalle

Chris Leclerc

Bob Eklund

Howard Hays

Paul Carpenter

Kim Clymer-Kelley

Christopher Nyerges

Peter Dills 

Dr. Tina Paul

Rich Johnson

Merri Jill Finstrom

Lori Koop

Rev. James Snyder

Tina Paul

Mary Carney

Katie Hopkins

Deanne Davis

Despina Arouzman

Greg Welborn

Renee Quenell

Ben Show

Sean Kayden

Marc Garlett

OUT TO PASTOR 

A Weekly Religion Column by Rev. James Snyder

I have long ago given up trying to keep up with the Joneses, and not just because they have moved away. I have a hard enough time trying to keep up with myself, 
let alone trying to figure out what somebody else is doing so I can top them at it.

One aspect of trying to keep up with the Joneses is being on top of what is referred to as being Politically Correct. As far as I know, I do not have a political bone 
in my body. I do have a bone to pick with some politicians, but that is another story.

Everybody is so afraid they are going to break some PC rule and offend somebody. Most people today are so easily offended that it is virtually impossible not to offend somebody. I do 
not want to intentionally offend anybody and I try my best not to. However, for the life of me, I am not able to keep up with all of this political correctness that seems to be domineering 
in our country today. Because, as soon as you figure it out somebody changes the rules and another word or phrase has been deemed not politically correct.

What was politically correct yesterday may be politically incorrect today. If you get your days mixed up and confused, you are not going to know what is politically correct. I think a 
book should be published every year listing all of the things that are politically correct and politically incorrect. Nobody is allowed to change any, at least for a year. Then, when they 
come to change it there has to be a national election to vote the political correctness in.

Some people believe it to be un-American to use phrases that are politically incorrect. I for one, have a hard time keeping a list of all of these politically correct and incorrect words 
and phrases.

I had some business with an attorney and once we finished our business, we had a few moments and were chatting together. I could tell from his chatting that he was rather politically 
correct in everything he does. I guess that is what comes to being an attorney. Somebody once said that sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can never hurt you. Whoever 
said that was so wrong we need to take that phrase and make it politically incorrect.

"This is America," he pontificated with me, "and we have freedom of speech. Everybody is free to have their opinion and to express it. That is what America's all about." He went on 
and on about this matter of freedom of speech.

Then, I am not quite sure how it happened, but we got on some rather indelicate subject that was positively politically incorrect.

With the majority of people, freedom of speech does not really mean that the other person is free to speak. It simply means I have the freedom to speak.

"So," I said rather delicately trying to feel my way through this subject, "you believe everybody has the freedom to express their opinion?"

"Yes, sir," he said very emphatically. Then he went off on another pontificating spree asserting the rights of all Americans to express their opinion.

I knew which side of the issue, he was on and so I broached it this way. "You then believe," I said weighing each and every word and syllable, "that you have the right to say a certain 
thing is right." I mentioned what the thing was but I do not need to include it here.

"Not only do I believe it," he said on another pontificating spree, "but I practice 
it every day of my life. Nobody has the right to tell me what I can and cannot 
believe!"

"Let me get this right, you have the freedom to say that this," and I mentioned 
what it was, "is perfectly right."

He nodded and smiled very broadly and then I continued my thought. "Do I 
have any rights in this area?" He nodded and indicated I could continue speaking. 
"You have the right to believe that this certain thing is right, but do I have the 
right to believe that it is wrong?"

Well, you might have hit him with a double-barreled shotgun. He never thought 
of it that way. All he thought of was what his opinion was and that he had the 
complete freedom to express that opinion. Anybody who had a different opinion 
did not have the same right as he did to express it.

"I never thought of it that way," he stammered as he stared at me. "I'm going to 
have to give that some more thought."

Somebody who believes something is right has the complete freedom to say so. 
On the other side of the track, the person who believes it is wrong has just as 
much right to think and say that it is wrong.

It is hard to keep up with a world that is constantly changing, especially in this 
area. That is why I love the Bible so much. That is why I am a follower of Jesus 
Christ because neither one ever changes. I take great refuge in what the Bible 
says. "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever," (Hebrews 13:8). 

Today I rest in the unchanging grace and character of the God who loves me and 
provided for my salvation. And, tomorrow will be the same.


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LEFT TURN/RIGHT TURN

GREG Welborn

HOWARD Hays As I See It


NO DEAL IS BETTER 
THAN A BAD DEAL

“Fellow marchers, so 
much has changed in 
fifty years . . . But what 
has not changed is the 
imperative of citizenship, 
that willingness of a 26 
year-old deacon, or a 
Unitarian minister, or 
a young mother of five, 
to decide they loved this 
country so much that 
they’d risk everything to realize its promise.”

President Barack Obama – Selma, Alabama 
- March 7, 2015

 

 I watched some of the speech on TV, and 
then read the transcript. With the passage 
quoted above, when the president mentioned 
that “26 year-old deacon”, “Unitarian 
minister” and “young mother of five”, I got 
a feeling of them being real people – and 
wanted to know them more.

 “The Americans who crossed this bridge 
were not physically imposing. But they gave 
courage to millions. They held no elected 
office. But they led a nation.”

 James Orange was a year out of high 
school when he became an organizer with the 
Southern Christian Leadership Conference. 
In February 1965 he was arrested and jailed 
for contributing to the delinquency of 
minors – enlisting youngsters to help with 
voter registration. 

 There was concern he might be lynched. 
500 left the Zion United Methodist Church 
intending to march to the jail a half-block 
away, sing hymns, then return. They were 
met by police, sheriff’s deputies and Alabama 
State Troopers. Suddenly the street lights 
went out, giving cover as the cops rushed 
and beat on the marchers.

 Jimmie Lee Jackson ran to a café behind 
the church to escape, along with his mother 
and 82-year-old grandmother. Cops clubbed 
the grandmother to the floor. Her daughter 
came to help and was clubbed, too. When 
Jackson went to protect his mother, he was 
shoved against a vending machine and shot 
twice in the stomach, clubbed some more, 
and died a week later. 

 As rage spread, the Selma SCLC envisioned 
a march from Selma to Montgomery to 
channel anger while protesting for voting 
rights. Jimmie Lee Jackson was 26 and a 
deacon at his church.

 “The American instinct that led these 
young men and women to pick up the torch 
and cross this bridge is the same instinct 
that moved patriots to choose revolution 
over tyranny. It’s the same instinct that drew 
immigrants from across oceans and the Rio 
Grande; the same instinct that led women to 
reach for the ballot and workers to organize 
against an unjust status quo.”

 James Reeb grew up in Kansas and 
Wyoming. He got his theology degree and 
became involved in social causes, living 
with his wife and four kids in poor, black 
neighborhoods where he felt he could do the 
most good. He worked on desegregation and 
encouraged his congregation to get involved 
with civil rights.

 Reeb, like most Americans was horrified 
by Bloody Sunday on the Edmund Pettis 
Bridge – and knew he had to be there to 
join in the struggle. Two days later he was in 
Selma, leaving an integrated restaurant after 
dining with two other ministers when he 
was set upon by a group of men with clubs.

 Reeb was 38 when he died two days later, 
his wife at his side, following brain surgery. 
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. eulogized, “James 
Reeb symbolizes the forces of good will in 
our nation. He demonstrated the conscience 
of the nation . . . He was a witness to the truth 
that men of different races and classes can 
live, eat and work together as brothers.”

 President Lyndon Johnson mentioned 
Reeb when he delivered a draft of the Voting 
Rights Act to Congress. Another president 
mentioned him fifty years later, speaking 
from the spot where, fifty years before, 
events happened that brought this Unitarian 
minister to Selma.

 “It’s the idea held by generations of citizens 
who believed that America is a constant 
work in progress; who believed that loving 
this country requires more than singing its 
praises or avoiding uncomfortable truths. 
It requires the occasional disruption, the 
willingness to speak out for what’s right and 
shake up the status quo.”

 Viola Riuzzo was six when, in the depths 
of the Depression, the family moved to 
Tennessee. She didn’t understand, and to 
her it didn’t seem right, that although they 
were as dirt-poor as the black families in 
their community, they were for some reason 
treated with more deference and privilege.

Settling in Detroit in the early 1940s, Riuzzo 
eloped as a teen, married a Teamsters agent 
and went back to school. She witnessed the 
racial violence and rioting in segregated 
Detroit, joined the NAACP and helped 
organize local protests.

 She heard the call of Dr. King after Bloody 
Sunday for people of all faiths to come because 
it’s “everybody’s fight”. Riuzzo hooked up with 
the SCLC, packed her car, said goodbye to 
family and headed for Selma.

Her job was meeting volunteers and ferrying 
them between airports, bus stations and train 
depots. After participating in the largely 
peaceful March 21-25 march from Selma to 
Montgomery she went back to work – assisted 
by black teenager Leroy Moton, taxiing 
participants to their hotels and bus stops.

 On Route 80, a car tried to force them off 
the road. Down a back road returning to 
Selma, a car with four Klansmen overtook 
them and fired into the car, which crashed 
into a fence. Covered with blood, Moton 
froze as the Klansmen came to check on the 
passengers. As soon as they left, he flagged 
down help, but it was too late – Riuzzo had 
been killed by two shots to the head. Dr. 
Martin Luther King Jr. and Roy Wilkins 
attended Viola Riuzzo’s funeral five days 
later in Detroit.

 With one of the Klansmen an FBI 
informant, J. Edgar Hoover started a smear 
campaign alleging Viola Riuzza was a 
Communist and drug addict who abandoned 
her family to sleep around with black guys. 
She was 39, the young mother of five.

“We honor those who walked so we could run. 
We must run so our children soar. And we will 
not grow weary.”

- President Obama

President Obama was so disdainful of 
Benjamin Netanyahu that he publicly 
commented he hadn’t even bothered to 
watch the Prime Minister’s address to 
Congress, and then obfuscated about its 
text not offering any “viable alternative”. 
From that statement alone, we can deduce 
that the President really didn’t even bother 
to read the text of the speech or Obama 
would have realized that Netanyahu 
actually articulated a much better 
alternative to the bad deal Obama seems 
willing to sign.

 Interestingly, despite Obama’s public 
slap at Netanyahu, the Prime Minister 
was gracious enough to offer Obama a face 
saving overture by praising Obama for “all 
he has done for Israel”. Netanyahu is to be 
complimented for that gesture. He knew 
his speech would anger Obama, but he also 
knew he had to give the speech because the 
stakes are so high in this negotiation with 
Iran. Obama is committed to getting a 
deal – any deal – for the sake of his legacy, 
but the result of this approach is likely to 
be deadly for Israel, the U.S. and the west. 

 The Prime Minister didn’t pull any 
punches in discrediting the details of 
what the Obama administration is about 
to accept. The very heart of Netanyahu’s 
criticism is the nature of the Iranian 
regime. A deal is only as good as the 
deal’s participants, and here is the critical 
flaw of Obama’s approach. Netanyahu 
pointed out in painstaking specificity 
the evidence which shows Iran continues 
to be a sponsor of terrorism, fanatically 
committed to the “annihilation of 
Israel” and determined to dominate its 
neighbors. The historical record is not 
pretty, including internal repression and 
mass killings, continued military support 
of Assad’s regime, destabilization of other 
countries’ governments and the on-going 
arming of Hezbollah, Hamas, and Shiite 
militias.

 The bottom line is that Iran cannot be 
allowed a nuclear bomb. In stark contrast 
to Obama’s assertion that Iran would 
join as a responsible member the family 
of nations, Iran would actually conquer, 
dominate and intimidate other nations. 
The key evidence of Iran’s intention in this 
regard is Iran’s continued development of 
intercontinental ballistic missiles. Nobody 
develops ICBMs to deliver anything 
except nuclear warheads to countries far 
afield. ICBMs are designed to deliver 
these payloads to other continents – say 
Europe and America.

 The critical issue is something called 
“breakout time” – the time it takes to 
go from a peaceful nuclear program to 
actually putting together a bomb. If you 
have all the components ready to go, just 
needing assembly, your breakout time is 
short. If you don’t have those components 
– the primary one being enriched uranium 
– then your breakout time is long.

 The Obama deal guarantees that Iran 
will get a nuclear 
bomb either by 
keeping the deal 
or by violating 
the deal. The deal 
allows Iran to 
enrich as much 
uranium as it wants after 10 years, but 
the deal doesn’t require the dismantling 
of any enrichment facilities. This means 
Iran could easily enrich uranium in 
secret. As Netanyahu pointed out, 
“inspectors document violations; they 
don’t stop them”. This was echoed by the 
International Atomic Energy Agency in 
its most recent report which expressed 
its concerns “about the possible existence 
in Iran of undisclosed development of 
nuclear payloads for missiles”.

 The only way to stop Iran is to force 
Iran to dismantle as many of its existing 
facilities as we can find. The only way 
to force the dismantling is to maintain 
existing economic sanctions and to 
impose even tougher ones if Iran does not 
agree to dismantling their facilities.

 As Netanyahu pointed out, the 
economic sanctions are working. They’re 
forcing Iran to the negotiating table. This 
isn’t the time to reduce that pressure. This 
is also why Saudi Arabia continues to 
pump oil at capacity in the face of falling 
oil prices. Economically, Saudi Arabia 
should cut back in hopes of raising the 
price of oil. But Saudi Arabia knows that 
Iran is a threat and knows that Iran needs 
a $136/barrel oil price to meet its cashflow 
demands. Iran, for all its bluster and all 
the trouble it causes in the Middle East, is 
still a weak country hurting economically. 
If we let them off the economic hook, they 
will only become more dangerous to their 
neighbors and the west. 

 Obama wants a deal for the deal’s 
sake so that his legacy will be “peace 
in his time”. Unfortunately, this leads 
him to accepting terms which will only 
guarantee that the next president’s crisis 
will be nuclear proliferation. If Iran gets 
the bomb, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and others 
will not be far behind.

 Obama claims to be a man of peace. 
Well the best way to get peace and keep 
that peace is to make sure it is a just peace 
for all concerned. Iran must be shown, in 
no uncertain terms that its current actions 
must stop and its nuclear capabilities 
dismantled. The best way to do that is to 
reject the deal, increase sanctions and let 
it be known that the U.S. will not stand in 
the way of any other regional power taking 
steps to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities.

 About the author: Gregory J. Welborn 
is a freelance writer and has spoken to 
several civic and religious organizations 
on cultural and moral issues. He lives in 
the Los Angeles area with his wife and 3 
children and is active in the community. 
He can be reached gregwelborn2@gma/5l.
com

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