Learn and adapt
Dear editor:
So President Trump decided to stay away from the current climate change accord. It’s not a treaty, it has no enforcement mechanism, it treats developed nations unfairly — and that’s hardly a good start.
I don’t believe that climate change is caused by human behavior. I think that the human race is the most adaptable animal on the planet. When something goes wrong and threatens us, we adapt, we go with the flow, so to speak. We make do with what we have and get along.
So, if the climate is changing, and if that change will be what some call a danger to mankind, let’s find out what is really causing it and what we can do to get along with the changes. In Noah’s day, we survived a global flood, didn’t we? Geologists can tell what has happened in the past and reasonably predict what may happen in the near future, at least. Let’s learn and adapt, instead of just assuming we can cause or prevent changes. Some things are just meant to be. M. Wayne Spencer Hot Springs
Dear editor:
After reading a George Will column in the June 1 issue, I should like to proclaim a strong “Amen” to his writing. His point was that “conservatism” is not the same today as it was in the past. And, he is correct. It has changed like both parties have changed in the last 30 years.
When I began voting at age 22 (before the law was changed in the ’70s to 18 for legal voting and when 18 was still legal for young voters to drink in many states), I was influenced by my reading and by my having been a native son of a heavily Democratic state (Arkansas) where often political corruption existed during election years, to become a conservative follower of the GOP. But “conservatism” then did not mean failing to compromise. The viewpoint of “conservatism” then was being “fiscally conservative” but “socially liberal” with most issues. It was not a populism, which stresses issues to impress the man on the street, many of whom are not voters or not even registered to vote. Populism is an appeal to the crowd, to the masses. We have seen much of that in the 2016 election and some of it continues with the current administration.
Real conservatism has an intellectual background, not a populist background. The best example is William J. Buckley and his National Review publication and syndicated columnist George Will, who is still actively published in scores of newspapers across this land. However, as Will pointed out in his June 1 column, the “conservatism” of the past has become corrupted by a crowd-pleasing “populism” of the present. It is not the first time it has happened. According to U.S. history, the same thing occurred with the Andrew Jackson election.
One should check Google for that period to see the damages done with that mindset, especially in the treatment of American Cherokee and Seminole Indian tribes. Our present POTUS finds a strong affinity with Jackson.
The upshot of how all this affected me was my decision in the ’90s to return to my parents and grandparents traditional “Democrat” political stance, though some of the issues I have not agreed with since then. The Democrat Party has turned away from its strong negative stand on civil rights (they fought any civil rights bill for years in Congress), but eventually under Kennedy and followed even more by Johnson opened the flood gates for more rights for minorities of all kinds. Some of that may have been too far, too fast, but what a change in general for the rights of all citizens, of any color, any ethnic background, any faith and any sexual preference.
We need to keep an intellectual conservationist attitude in our national and state politics, but we also must continue to protect the rights of all, including the rights of female gender. Have a good day, and may God’s richest blessings be on all. John W. “Doc” Crawford Hot Springs