Gainesville Daily Register (Gainesville, Tex.), Vol. 127, No. 110, Ed. 1 Tuesday, January 31, 2017 Page: 4 of 22
This newspaper is part of the collection entitled: Gainesville Register and was provided to The Portal to Texas History by the Cooke County Library.
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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Carmen Karston, Gainesville
Got an opinion?
Share it
B Wl
George Will
U.S. Senator
John Cornyn
517 Hart Senate Office Bldg.,
Fax: 202-225-3486 http://thornberry.
house.gov
Texas Governor
Greg Abbott
P.O. Box 12428, Austin, TX 78711
512-463-2000, http://gov.texas.gov
State Representative
Drew Springer
Gainesville Mayor
Jim Goldsworthy
Gainesville City Hall, 200 S. Rusk,
Gainesville, TX 76240, 940-665-7777
YOUR ELECTED OFFICIALS
President
Donald Trump
The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania
Ave., Washington, D.C. 20500
www.whitehouse.gov/contact
Vice President
Mike Pence
Executive Office Building, Washington,
D.C. 20501
vice_president@ whitehouse, gov
Washington, D.C. 20510,
Main: 202-224-2934
Fax: 202-228-2856
www.cornyn.senate.gov
U.S. Senator
Ted Cruz
404 Russell, Washington,
D.C. 20510, Main: 202-224-5922
Fax: 202-228-3398 www.cruz.senate.gov
U.S. Representative
Mac M. Thornberry
2525 Kell Blvd., Wichita Falls, TX, 76308
Main: 202-225-3706
State Senator
Craig Estes
P.O. Box 12068 , Capitol Station
Austin, TX 78711, (512) 463-0124
Cooke County Judge
Jason Brinkley
Cooke County Courthouse, Gainesville,
TX, 76240, 940-668-5435,
jason.brinkley@co.cooke.tx.us
P.O. Box 2910, Austin, TX 78769
512-463-0526,
Gainesville: 940-580-1770
www.house.state.tx.us/ members/
kJ
An open letter
An open letter to Kellyanne Conway, enabler-in-chief to the
current president of the United States.
To a reporter seeking relevant responses from you on an
important issue, words to effect of "If this continues, we may
have to rethink our relationship."
You may want to rethink your use of this response, Mrs.
Conway. Millions of Americans are rethinking our relationship
with your present employer.
About the ludicrous order that the vote recount be
investigated, you responded "Why shouldn't it be?"
Let's consider that the money, time and energy to be
invested in this trivial pursuit could instead be directed to
Mr.Trump's stated vision of rehabilitating the department of
Veteran's Affairs. Yes, the V.A. does much good and could do
more with the backing of Congress which should respond to
the leadership of a Republican president. That should happen
now, if he wants to honor his promise to veterans.
If you want to be more than a rubber-stamp justifier of
his every petty word and action, be bold enough to be a
messenger from the public as well.
This brings us to the outrageous notion of the wall. The one
that is there has been scaled and tunneled under in dozens,
maybe hundreds of places, with entries and exits undetectable
to border security; many are in private homes and property.
The roads necessary for construction could just as easily be
used by traffickers. And the cost of $4 million to $6 million per
mile would refurbish and operate every hospital and clinic, day
care center and school within hundreds of miles of the useless
wall. It is a pork barrel project for companies to whom Trump
owes favors. His reputation for spending money, then leaving
the debt and often workers unpaid is almost legendary.
A man with a head for business and a full-blown character
disorder told millions of voters whatever they wanted to hear,
even when he had to contradict himself to do it. Fine. But why
be gullible enough to vote for him with no more evidence of his
ability or intent to carry through?
Along with Democrats, Independents and any adult with a
pulse and an IQ higher than the room temperature, Republicans
better hold this president's feet to the fire.
You owe it to America.
offense at everything while believing anything.”
Many colleges and universities, competing for
tuition dollars “too often drawn thoughtlessly from
an inexhaustible well of loans,” market a “college
experience” rather than an education.
The experience “turns into five and, increasingly,
six [years].” Nichols notes that “the fragility of
21st-century students” results from “the swaddling
environment of the modern university” that
I “infantilizes students” who demand “trigger
warnings” and “safe spaces.”
HF Much attention has been given to the non-
college-educated voters who rallied to Trump.
Insufficient attention is given to the role of the
college miseducated. They, too, are complicit
in our current condition because they emerged
from their expensive “college experiences” neither
disposed nor able to conduct civil, informed arguments.
They are thus disarmed when confronted by political
people who consider evidence, data and reasoning to
be mere conveniences and optional.
For all the talk in high places about emancipating the
many from “the elites,” political philosopher Walter
Berns was right: The question always is not whether
elites will govern but which elites will. And a republic’s
challenge is to increase the likelihood that the many
will consent to governance by worthy elites. So, how is
our republic doing?
What is most alarming about the president and his
accomplices in the dissemination of factoids is not that
they do not know this or that. And it is not that they do
not know what they do not know. Rather, it is that they
do not know what it is to know something.
The republican form of government rests on
representation: The people do not decide issues, they
decide who will decide. Who, that is, will conduct the
deliberations that “refine and enlarge” public opinion
(Madison, Federalist 10).
This system of filtration is vitiated by a plebiscitary
presidency, the occupant of which claims a direct,
unmediated, almost mystical connection with “the
people.”
Soon, presidential enablers, when challenged about
their employer’s promiscuous use of “alternative
facts,” will routinely use last week’s “justification” of
the illegal voting factoid: It is the president’s “long-
standing belief,” so there. In his intellectual solipsism,
he, too, takes correction as an insult. He resembles
many of his cultured despisers in the academy more
than he or they realize.
George Will's email address is georgewill@washpost.com.
An excess of intellectual emptiness
WASHINGTON — In 2013, a college student assigned
to research a deadly substance sought help via Twitter:
“I can’t find the chemical and physical properties of
sarin gas someone please help me.” An expert at a
security consulting firm tried to be helpful, telling her
that sarin is not gas. She replied, “yes the [expletive] it
is a gas you ignorant [expletive], sarin is a liquid & can
evaporate... shut the [expletive] up.”
Tom Nichols, professor at the U.S. Naval War t
College and the Harvard Extension School,
writing in The Chronicle Review, says such
a “storm of outraged ego” is an increasingly
common phenomenon among students who,
having been taught to regard themselves as
peers of their teachers, “take correction as an
insult.”
Nichols relates this to myriad intellectual viruses
thriving in academia. Carried by undereducated
graduates, these viruses infect the nation’s civic
culture.
Soon the results include the presidential megaphone
being used to amplify facially preposterous assertions,
e.g., that upward of 5 million illegal votes were cast
in 2016. A presidential minion thinks this assertion is
justified because it is the president’s “long-standing
belief.”
“College, in an earlier time,” Nichols writes, “was
supposed to be an uncomfortable experience because
growth is always a challenge,” replacing youthful
simplicities with adult complexities.
Today, college involves the “pampering of students as
customers,” particularly by grade inflation in a context
of declining academic rigor: A recent study showed “A”
to be the most commonly awarded grade, 30 percent
more frequent than in 1960. And a 2011 University of
Chicago study found that 45 percent of students said
that in the previous semester none of their courses
required more than 20 pages of writing and 32 percent
had no class that required more than 40 pages of
reading in a week.
“Unearned praise and hollow successes,” Nichols
says, “build a fragile arrogance in students that can
lead them to lash out at the first teacher or employer
who dispels that illusion, a habit that carries over
into a resistance to believe anything inconvenient or
challenging in adulthood.”
A habit no doubt intensified when adults in high
places speak breezily of “alternative facts.”
“Rather than disabuse students of their intellectual
solipsism,” Nichols says, “the modern university
reinforces it,” producing students given to “taking
Send your letter to the editor to editor@
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subject to editing for clarity and length.
One letter per writer will be published
in the same week. All letters must
contain a physical address and daytime
phone number. Only names and
hometown will be published.
4 - TUESDAY, JANUARY 31,2017
GAINESVILLE DAILY REGISTER
Opinion
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Armstrong, Mark J. Gainesville Daily Register (Gainesville, Tex.), Vol. 127, No. 110, Ed. 1 Tuesday, January 31, 2017, newspaper, January 31, 2017; Gainesville, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1323898/m1/4/?q=Lamar+University: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Cooke County Library.