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March 5, 2009 Opinions |
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—Letters To The Editor—
Flag Etiquette
To The Record-Courier:
A recently passed law concerning flag etiquette has had relatively little publicity. The law permits veterans to render a military hand salute during the national anthem and the rising or lowering or passing of the American flag.
I started using this recently when asked why I saluted, I showed them this article. Hopefully this law will become better known and used.
WASHINGTON (Oct. 2008)— Veterans and active-duty military not in uniform can now render the military-style hand salute during the playing of the national anthem, thanks to changes in federal law that took effect this month.
“The military salute is a unique gesture of respect that marks those who have served in our nation’s armed forces,” said Secretary of Veterans Affairs Dr. James B. Peake. “This provision allows the application of that honor in all events involving our nation’s flag.”
The new provision improves upon a little known change in federal law last year that authorized veterans to render the military-style hand salute during the raising, lowering or passing of the flag, but it did not address salutes during the national anthem.
Traditionally, members of the nation’s veterans service organizations have rendered the hand salute during the national anthem and at events involving the national flag while wearing their organization’s official head gear.
The most recent change, authorizing hand-salutes during the national anthem by veterans and out-of-uniform military personnel, was sponsored by Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, an Army veteran. It was included in the Defense Authorization Act of 2009, which President Bush signed on Oct. 14.
The earlier provision authorizing hand-salutes for veterans and out-of-uniform military personnel during the raising, lowering or passing of the flag, was contained in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2008, which took effect Jan. 28, 2008.
E.R. “Andy” Anderson
Boise, Idaho
Reality Vs. The Bugs
To The Record-Courier:
Not too long ago, I wrote a letter regarding my little friends making references to the bugs that have made their home here and around the premises. Remember the frog that I had mentioned in between the cracks of our cement while visiting with our friends etc....and every time we wanted to talk he would let his/her opinion be known too... it was hard not to laugh at the competition we were dealing with. And then not to mention the praying mantis, we even saw a baby one. It seems the frog had been following me around. No match for one’s shadow though.
Well, last summer on my way to work to a friend’s house they opened the door after ringing the door bell and looked down and here was a little green frog, figuring it was open invitation just to hop right in and make the best of what he could, but he was stopped short, poor guy...so anyway while I was out working in my yard one day and trimming as usual, out jumped this little green frog...yes, you can see the picture by now, I felt that he had followed me home knowing I would welcome him with open arms.
So not too long after that my husband was chopping wood one evening and almost came down on not only one frog, but two frogs sitting on a piece of wood, maybe they just got married and felt what a perfect place to have a honeymoon sitting on their perch and enjoying the perfect setting for them. My husband was so excited about seeing them he just had to show me. So we left them alone undisturbed to enjoy themselves, then just a short time after that we saw a baby preying mantis so guess we shall see what produces or reproduces this year. If we can just leave things as is, it just might work itself out no matter what the situation is.
So, doesn’t it make one wonder what kind of bugs are yet to be worked out with all the talk of the bailout plan and all just passed and yet, we haven’t even seen the effects to some degree of the last passage of the previous bill, so is this the sign of a merry go round, or what goes around comes around? Even the geese are making their way back to what they know best. It seems as though all is too soon too fast.
Maybe things would work out better all the way around if we give it time to work itself out. After all the geese, where I know they like to go to lay their eggs and all, know that they are protected and have their babies, and move on, seems to me a generation of geese have adapted their habitat and elsewhere and know how to survive, unlike the critters I have mentioned in this letter. Seems to me we can learn the value of these issues of life and give life a chance to work itself out.
Coffee Anyone
Brenda Dickison
Baker City
Bring On The Towers
To The Record-Courier:
Bring on the Towers. I think they should put them right down Main Street. Then the next idiot will suggest putting trams onto the power lines so the Trekky’s can get around easier. Won’t have to worry about removing snow with the towers on Main Street. Wouldn’t be a place for the famous dots and bike races, wouldn’t that be a shame, or the 10 or 12 people might miss them, and you can put Hells Canyon Rally at Hells Canyon. Yep, they pretty much want to overrun Baker City with everything but jobs. Remember how Baker was, without all these “brilliant” people? Bring on the towers, put-em right down Main Street. One of these “brilliant” people said Baker City is a city of trees, lets make’r the city of towers.
Bill Todd
Baker City
Big Look Bad Bad Bad
To The Record-Courier:
During the last couple years there has been a commission to take a Big Look at Oregon’s land use laws and they filed a report to the legislature. There was a major recommendation to return power to the locals. As it is said, “A camel is a horse designed by committee.” Headlines in the Capitol Press a week ago said that the counties say Big Look is unworkable and the last issue has an editorial calling on the legislature to return control to the counties, right after we save the State budget. Good luck on that. One wonders where we spent all that Big Look money on. Did we find out who owns Oregon, the number of recent imports from other states, the number of foreign owners of that farm land and open space we saved, the demographics of the new owners? Were they millionaire refugees from large suburban areas who now want to farm or ranch or need a tax deduction? And who was it that put the two counties forming regions? It couldn’t have been a poison pill slipped in by Thousand Friends, could it?
Recent farm census data reveals that American farmers are getting old. Young people are forced out of trying to learn how to farm and ranch because of high land prices. In Oregon, zoning laws require large land blocks that shut the young out of land ownership. There will be consequences to turning over land use laws to the urban left. Soon we will be dependent on large land block owners who are new to farming and ranchers who tell us they can’t possibly survive without hordes of Mexican immigrants who will work for a time on the land and then move on to a better life in the city trades. Then the cycle will begin again with more immigrants until the population rises to the point where we must give up more rights because the cities will become unlivable and newcomers sprawl into the countryside. It’s time for change we can believe in and that should include a basic bill of rights for the native born. Start with keep your hands off my land ownership rights and stay away from my guns. Something the left will fight but the pendulum has swung about as far left as it is going to go. Street protests are now called “tea parties.” Looks like a few Americans have actually read a little history.
Steve Culley
Baker City
Hegelian Principle
To The Record-Courier:
In reading issues about the recent travel plans and county board and committee advisory resources and uses, conservation, etc., one can reason that in the last couple of years of conflicts managements, the principle of the “Hegelian principle” is taking place by certain public officials (far left) to play the 3 step principle of the process of thesis, anti-thesis, and third step synthesis. Hitler used this conflict management and his “brown shirts” back in the 1930’s. In simple analysis, the brown shirts would go out on public streets and create a mock riot which then was the thesis. Then Hitler’s riot S.S. squad would stem the mock riots (anti-thesis) that would give Hitler authorization over sight to intervene (FS?) as the people’s (messiah?) arbitrator. (3 step process.)
The dictionary gives Hegelianism, “the philosophical doctrine of Hegel that gives dialectic reasoning, a process where by thought passes repeatedly in ascending stages from thesis to anti-thesis to synthesis, can unravel the order of development in which human consciousness and reality participate.” (New World Order?)
In other books such as my desktop encyclopedia gives more detail. George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1770-1831, German philosopher, formulator of antidealistic philosophy that has enormous influence since his day. He wrote several books on this topic. Welding together a world view with theories of ethics, aesthetics, history, politics and religions.
Fundamentally he believed in an enveloping absolute. In this dialectic, one concept (thesis) inevitably evokes its apposite anti-thesis, and the two interact to form a new concept synthesis, which in turn becomes a new thesis. (FS?) Thus the idea of being evokes the idea of not being, and the two necessarily produce the synthesis, becoming. (FS)
The universe is thus in a state of perpetual self creation. The absolute is the active principle in this process. History also shows the progress from lower to higher manifestations of the principle. In art also different periods succeed each other. In religion Christianity was considered as succeeding to a nature (world) religion (i.e. evolutionary changes of man) and Christ is a union of god and man, of spirit and matter.
Various later philosophers developed differing aspects of this system. Hegelian dialectic appealed strongly to the socialist and was developed into marxian dialectical materialism. (Far left socialists).
Since the days of the Industrial Revolution here in America, you can see this process taking place in every aspect of our lives. As stated; history also shows the progress from lower to higher manifestations of the principle. The worship of “earth day” evangelists is the Greek god of Gaia, that replaces Christ, or other monotheism, our god religious vs. plural gods. This is called-considered planetary cultures and the new world border or the “enlightened ones,” the master of wisdom or messiahs., i.e. Obama, Gore, the pied piper of the world huggers, etc. The agrud 21, “Reo” earth summit is now here in Baker County’s politics and eco wackos in concert with the Feds nationalizing federal lands as a conservational programs enlarge-emit from “eco” coalitions conspiracy. Mr. Michaels should heed the NRAC with caution to the Hegelian principle of evolutionaries.
Bruce Parke
Sumpter, Ore.
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