Peace, good will under fire

Opinion

January 4, 2013

Peace, good will under fire

By Bill Crawford/Meridian Star columnist The Picayune Item Picayune Item Fri Jan 04, 2013, 08:00 AM CST

MERIDIAN, Miss. — “When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi.” (Matt. 2:16)

The precious children massacred in Newtown led our preacher to remind us that the Christmas story had a dark side too.

We like to celebrate and commercialize the bright side. We ignore but still commercialize the dark side.

Huh?

Many businesses target and profit from the dark side just as they do the bright side.

The ever-more-violent video game business is booming. Sales of military style weapons hyped in video games are brisk. News and social media fixation on Newtown and related divisive issues boost advertising profits. Even the business side of politics is finding bonuses, using the issue fallout from Newtown to mobilize and build war chests for looming fights.

Precious children and precious life were valueless to the Newtown shooter.

And to the Aurora, Tucson, and Carson City shooters. Since 2006 the FBI recorded more than 100 mass murder shootings. That’s in addition to the growing numbers of drive-by, domestic, and armed robbery shootings.

The underpinnings of our moral fabric — the commandments “thou shalt not kill” and “love thy neighbor” and the admonition “love your enemies” — are crumbling.

What to do?

Many try to avoid the growing dark side by moving to safe locations. The massacre in Newtown slams that idea. Newtown is one of those places most would flee to.

So, how do we repair our moral fabric?

English philosopher Edmund Burke said, “all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

He didn’t say what good men should do, but he joined Machiavelli and Calvin in saying people by nature are weak (sinful) and must have a higher authority that imposes order.

That’s difficult in a free society.

It would require a state-based, nationwide crackdown on business and activities that nurture the dark side … manufacture, distribution, and/or minimally restricted sales of violent video games, child and violent pornography, and high-capacity semi-automatic weapons; despicable behavior on the Internet; the illegal drug culture; and hate-based organizations, talk shows, blogs, web sites; etc.

It would require preachers, teachers, counselors, and opinion leaders to reach out and harmoniously promote, teach, and model peace, goodwill, and morality.

It would require all the rest of us, particularly parents, to lend them unwavering support.

Are there enough good men and women to make such happen?

The light of Christmas survived Herod. It gives us hope. It will sustain many this holiday season.

May it illuminate many darkened hearts and minds during the coming New Year.

(Crawford (crawfolk@gmail.com) is a syndicated columnist from Meridian.)

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Opinion

Not your mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist

I haven’t seen the Ladies’ Home Journal in about a million years, except maybe in the dentist’s office when I was trying to avoid a television permanently set on Fox News.
Somebody’s grandchild was selling magazines for a school project, and Ladies’ Home Journal was the only one on the list I recognized. Now it comes to the house.
Let’s just say: It’s not my mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal. This month, right behind a feature called “A Country of People Who Never Stop Eating” is one called “Nice Girls Do Get Tattoos.”

March 29, 2013
Health care market needs oversight
By Gene Lyons/Syndicated columnist

Sometimes the best journalism explains what’s right under our noses. In Steven Brill’s exhaustive Time magazine cover article, “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us,” it’s the staggeringly expensive, grotesquely inefficient and inhumane way Americans pay for medical care.

March 29, 2013
VA’s appalling failures not recent
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist

While recent national press attention to ongoing problems at Mississippi’s G.V. (Sonny) Montgomery Veterans Administration Medical Center in Jackson is welcome and needed, the failures of the overall VA service apparatus in Mississippi are not recent problems.
In short, former U.S. Rep. Sonny Montgomery — Mississippi’s “Mr. Veteran” and author of the modern G.I. Bill that bears his name — must be spinning in his grave. There have been significant failures and poor service to veterans documented by state and local media since 2008.

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Dolley Madison politically savvy
By Cokie and Steven V. Roberts/Syndicated columnists

When Dolley Payne Madison became first lady in 1809, she instituted Wednesday evening gatherings at the White House where political rivals could meet and talk. They were called “squeezes” because so many people showed up and crowded the room. As Cokie wrote in her book “Ladies of Liberty": “All were welcome as long as they were appropriately dressed. And all went — skipping a Wednesday night might mean missing a vital piece of political information or being left out of a crucial deal.”

March 27, 2013
Mississippi isn’t immune from national college tuition trends
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
Higher education in Mississippi has not been immune from national trends cited in a recent Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report which concludes that over the last five years, the global economic downturn and a “no new taxes” political climate have increasingly shifted the burden of higher education finance to students and parents at a time when enrollment is increasing and the percentage of state support is decreasing.

March 23, 2013
Right to vote not ‘racial entitlement
By Donna Brazile/Syndicated columnist
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March 23, 2013
1st day of spring brings memories
By Wyatt Emmerich/Southside Sun

The first day of spring! My favorite month, April, is just around the corner. Now we just need one big gullywasher to get rid of the pine pollen.
Normally, spring gives me a strong sense of rebirth and renewal, but this spring I seem surrounded by moments crystallizing the passage of time.
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March 22, 2013
Soaking up in tiger paw-shaped hot tub
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist

No springtime ritual was better at Auburn than sitting on hard rocks at a nearby state park to let cold water rush over your feet. You wore cut-off blue jeans and Dr. Scholl’s sandals, the unofficial uniform for coeds in the 1970s, and when you left, you felt ready to tackle tests, term papers and blind dates.

March 22, 2013
Medicaid or not, costs will be paid
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist

While the battle continues between state Republicans and other fiscal conservatives intent on focusing on the long-terms costs of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act and Democrats, health care advocates and state hospitals intent on focusing on the short-term benefits, the fact remains that one way or another, the costs of providing health care for the poor, the blind, the aged and the disabled will be paid by the taxpayers one way or another.

March 20, 2013
Multiculturalism is not rational
By Thomas Sowell/Syndicated columnist

Among the many irrational ideas about racial and ethnic groups that have polarized societies over the centuries and around the world, few have been more irrational and counterproductive than the current dogmas of multiculturalism.
Intellectuals who imagine that they are helping racial or ethnic groups that lag behind by redefining their lags out of existence with multicultural rhetoric are in fact leading them into a blind alley.

March 20, 2013
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