OUTLOOK 6 Walworth County Sunday Sunday, December 16, 2007 Place Your Ad Today!! THE WAY WE SEE IT Discouraging YOUR VIEWS heroism A mid the endless dissection of a madman’s rampage in an Omaha, Neb., shopping mall, one fact is largely ignored by the media and those who insist that restricting access to firearms will somehow prevent such acts of mass murder: Despite a law that allows Nebraska residents to carry concealed weapons, the mall naively declared itself a “gun-free zone.” Robert Hawkins, a troubled 20-year-old who indulged his misery to homicidal effect, entered the shopping center Dec. 5 intent on “going out in style,” as he wrote in a suicide note. With no one Our view ■ Gun-free zones make it easier for madmen to pull the trigger. armed and able to stop him, he gunned down eight innocents before finally killing himself. While attempting to comprehend the tortured logic of prohibiting concealed weapons in vulnerable public places, we’re reminded of an essay penned by Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson shortly after the Virginia Tech University massacre in April. Thompson correctly excoriated the university for happily advertising itself — much like the mall — as a “gun-free zone.” “Whenever I’ve seen one of those ‘Gun-free Zone’ signs, especially outside of a school filled with our youngest and most vulnerable citizens, I’ve always wondered exactly who these signs are directed at,” Thompson wrote. “Obviously, they don’t mean much to the sort of man who murdered 32 people just a few days ago.” Indeed, one wonders how many lives might have been saved in Omaha had just one person been armed and in position to stop Hawkins. Addressing that issue, Thompson’s essay sadly rings true again today: “When people capable of performing acts of heroism are discouraged or denied the opportunity,” he wrote, “our society is all the poorer.” Editor’s note: This letter is in response to the Dec. 9 editorial “Childless but one with the Earth,” which criticized female environmentalists who regard abortion and sterilization as a useful way to limit human pollution. ‘Defaming those who try’ To the editor: On occasion, I catch a glimpse of The Way We See It section of your publication and when I read it, I am absolutely disgusted. It is typically the most uninsightful, shallow piece of bigotry I’ve ever read — on every occasion. This person, who is obviously too embarrassed to sign his name to his words, defames leftists, environmentalists and other insightful, forward-thinking mind-sets. The people he attempts to shred are at least making an effort and are thinking ahead, instead of thinking only of themselves and their pocketbooks. These people the writer tries to humiliate have defeated laziness and risked combating the system for the sake of humanity. These people put their own needs aside and look to the future — something we all should be doing. After all, every one of us must have one goal in mind: survival of humanity. This person should show his face and sign his name if he is proud of the garbage that spews from his pen. Then maybe he should get off his self-righteous high horse and do some forward-thinking, like apologize for the blinders he has been wearing, and contribute to humanity’s survival, instead of defaming those who try. Sonja Schlesner Lake Geneva Paul won’t win presidency, but ... Let us concede at the start that Ron Paul is not like likely to be elected president. He neither looks nor sounds particularly presidential. He has a tendency to wander from his central message to discuss esoterica such a the gold standard. He lacks a professional campaign organization. He is an anti-war candidate in a pro-war party. And his campaign has attracted more than its share of conspiracy theorists and other fringe elements. Yet it is undeniable that Paul has struck a chord with a large segment of disaffected Republicans. His fundraising over the last few weeks has been phenomenal. Paul announced Dec. 2 that he expects to raise more than $12 million this quarter, and possibly as much as $15 million. Little more than an asterisk in polls just a couple of months ago, Paul is now running a respectable fourth in New Hampshire and closing in on double digits in other key states. As he spends some of the millions he has recently raised, that can only be expected to rise. Some of Paul’s appeal undoubtedly stems from his opposition to the war in Iraq. Polls show that as many as a third of Republicans oppose the war, and many others are deeply troubled by the seemingly endless conflict. With all the other Republicans trying to outdo one another at being the most belligerenttoward Iraq, Iran, Pakistan and the world in general, the Texas congressman stands out. If you want to register opposition to the Bush foreign policy, but aren’t willing to support the Democrats’ tax-and-spend government, Ron Paul is the perfect vehicle. But there is something more important at play here. Under the Bush administration, the Republican Party has increasingly drifted from its limited-government roots. Instead, it has come to be dominated by a new breed of “big-government conservatives” who believe in using an activist government to achieve conservative ends — even if it means increasing the size, cost and power of government, and limiting personal freedom in the process. The difference in the two camps is as clear as the difference between Ronald Reagan’s saying, “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem,” and George W. Bush’s saying, “We have a responsibility that when somebody hurts, government has got to move.” Bush’s brand of big-government conservatism brought us No Child Left Behind, the Medicare prescription-drug benefit, and a 23 percent increase in domestic discretionary spending. It may well have cost Republicans control of Congress. After all, on election night 2006, 55 percent of voters said that they thought the Republican Party was the party of big government. Most of the current Republican candidates fall squarely into the big-government camp. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney imposed a Hillary Clinton-style health plan in his state and not only supports No Child Left Behind but calls for the federal government to buy a laptop computer for every child born in America. He thinks we should increase farm price supports. John McCain has an admirable record as a fiscal conservative, but he shows a disturbing predilection for making a federal issue of every personal pet peeve from steroids in baseball to airplane service quality. He embraces heavily regulatory environmental policies that hurt businesses and cost jobs, such as expanding the Clean Water and Clean Air acts and implementing the Kyoto Protocols, and compulsory national service. More important, he also is the principal author of a campaign finance bill that severely restricts political speech. Rudy Giuliani's record on civil liberties suggests he views the Constitution as an afterthought. Fred Thompson talks a good game, but his record suggests he is closer to McCain-lite. Mike Huckabee may be an even bigger spender than President Bush, and he never met a tax increase he didn’t like. Thus, when Ron Paul talks about returning to limited constitutional government, a great many Republican primary voters sit up and take notice. For voters hungering for a return to the party of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan rather than the party of George W. Bush, Paul’s rhetoric is a breath of fresh air. No, Paul is not likely to be our next president. But he is delivering a message that the other candidates would do well to heed. Is anyone listening? How free press can protect us Two recent news items — an obituary about a U.S. Air Force officer and a newspaper column about a jailed Associated Press photographer — have a First Amendment connection that reaches across more than 50 years of U.S. history. Milo Radulovich, an Air Force reservist caught up in the 1950s McCarthy era, died Nov. 19. Secret charges in 1953 against Radulovich were brought to light by famed CBS newsman Edward R. Morrow and specious “evidence” of disloyalty evaporated when exposed to public scrutiny. Just a week after Radulovich died, Associated Press president and chief executive Tom Curley wrote an op-ed piece in The Washington Post about AP photographer Bilal Hussein. Hussein, part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning AP photo team in Iraq, has been jailed there since April 2006. Curley said the U.S. government is now claiming Hussein was a terrorist who infiltrated AP’s staff. But Curley maintains that in reality, “Bilal’s crime was taking photographs the U.S. government does not want its citizens to see.” What ties the two cases across time from a First Amendment standpoint is — irrespective of eventual guilt or innocence — the role of a free press as a watchdog on government. Public awareness of that role is too often lost in hyperventilated debates over whether the press is too liberal or conservative, too consolidated, too weak, or too focused on trivial celebrity highjinks. None of those issues is without merit. But the babble and boil obscures appreciation of the role of our free press to examine, expound on and occasionally expose what our govern- MICHAEL ICHAEL TANNER ANNER CATO INSTITUTE GENE ENE POLICINSKI OLICINSKI FIRST AMENDMENT ment is doing. In Radulovich’s instance, his military rank was threatened because of the activities of his father, a Serbian immigrant, and his sister. As it happened, his father’s suspicious action was reading a Serbian-language newspaper. His sister was a social activist, but it was her participation in a public protest over a Detroit hotel that refused to admit African-American singer-actor and activist Paul Robeson that authorities cited. Hardly the stuff of treason. Still, two Air Force officers showed up in August 1953 at Radulovich’s Michigan home and told him he was to forfeit his rank, pay and benefits and to appear at a hearing as a danger to national security. Murrow featured the Radulovich case in an Oct. 23 broadcast of the groundbreaking TV program “See It Now.” A month later, the reservist was exonerated. In 1998, the State Bar of Michigan honored the telecast, saying, “It is generally believed that the program was the beginning of the end for the McCarthy era.” Curley’s column about Hussein has echoes of the earlier case. He wrote that “every claim we’ve checked out has proved to be false, overblown or microscopic in significance.” A column or television program is neither evidence nor proof, but Curley publicly raises issues of fairness, fair trial and secret prosecu- tion. While the Bill of Rights is supposed to prevent such procedures from being employed by the U.S. government, it is the First Amendment’s provision for a news media outside the control of government officials that is the ultimate protection against Star Chamber tactics. At least one news report about Radulovich’s death quoted his attorney in 1953 as saying his “only chance” was to “get public opinion on his side.” The Detroit News did a series of stories that led to Murrow’s program, which brought more than 12,000 letters to CBS — most from people outraged about the Air Force proceedings. Whether or not Curley and others will raise the same public hue and cry about the Hussein case remains to be seen. Public opinion in wartime, we have seen repeatedly in our history, tends to favor the government and support its actions. But we already know, whether it’s the 20th or 21st century, that the American public is best served when the government is held to account in public, rather than being able to operate, and perhaps convict, behind closed doors. The First Amendment protection for a free press also preserves an independent voice in favor of a fair system fairly applied, with the public presence to hold government accountable for its actions. And that voice is, on occasion, all that stands between us and a government juggernaut that can take away our liberty, career or reputation. ■ Walworth County Sunday welcomes issue-oriented letters and guest column submissions for publication on the Outlook page. Guidelines: Letters no longer than 250 words; all letters are subject to editing for spelling, grammar, length; no personal attacks or letters related to personal disputes; daytime phone number needed for verification; limit of one per month. Guest columns should be approximately 550 to 650 words; not all guest columns will be published; limit of one per month. Send to: Managing Editor, P.O. Box 367, Delavan, WI, 53115. E-mail to bheisel@communityshoppers.com CENTER Michael Tanner is director of health and welfare studies at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. Gene Policinski is vice president and executive director of the First Amendment Center in Washington, D.C.
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