About a year ago, a Mike Luckovich cartoon in the Lewiston Tribune caused a furor. It depicted Black school children hiding under their seats as police come in the door. These children have every right to be afraid, as many of their fathers and brothers have been killed in police encounters.
In order to mollify the right wingers, the Tribune chose to add more conservative columnists, including fact-challenged retired ophthalmologist Richard Eggleston. A pathetic A. F. Branco was added to balance Pulitzer Prize winner Luckovich.
Yet the new columnist that irritates me the most is Dennis Prager, who harangues constantly against the “left,” irrationally defined as the press, universities, social media, science and the Democrats. Instead of expertise, Prager recommends biblical wisdom.
His column “Young Americans Voted to Ruin Their Lives” (Nov. 27) is a good example. He condemns misguided youth for voting in large numbers against four GOP senate candidates in Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Georgia.
Each of these were election deniers, and it is clear that our youth are more concerned about the Big Lie than many of their elders. A lie becomes “big” (and finally in full caps) when people continue to embrace it, even after overwhelming evidence proves that it is false.
The Associated Press VoteCast shows voters younger than 30 were, in part, thinking of candidate quality. Overall, they voted 53% Democrat in the midterms, but an average of 68% rejected the four election denying candidates.
This means that 15% of these voters voted Republican in other races. That indicates that leftist parents have not succeeded in making their children buy into the party-line voting of their elders — left or right.
Prager blames a Harvard University professor (as if a pollster is responsible for others’ opinions), for publishing a survey that showed that 59% of young people believe that “their rights are under attack” and “73% are troubled that the rights of others are threatened.”
Surveys showed that abortion was the principal issue for young voters. Among them, 80% who want abortion rights to be restored voted for a Democrat. To imply that young people should not be concerned about their rights is an insult, especially young women in most red states whose reproductive rights have been undermined.
Most believe that teen mothers, without pre-and post-natal care and without access to abortion, will most likely ruin their lives. Or die, because of our record maternal death rates.
In the United Kingdom abortion is legal up to 24 weeks and the only requirement is that two doctors must sign off on the procedure. These young women are not insulted by parental permission requirements, ultrasound imaging or adoption offers.
Our teen pregnancy rate is 35 per 100,000, while 9 “leftist” European nations have 22 per 100,000. Red states, except for six blues in the top 20, have the highest teen pregnancy rates.
Conservative parents frown on their unmarried teens having sex, but the U.S. has some of the highest rates of sexually transmitted infections in the developed world. Half the cases are found among youth 15-24, and most of these occur, overwhelmingly, in red states.
Since 2013, according to NBC News, “100 students have been killed and 155 injured by gunfire in 54 school shootings.” I believe that most youth would blame conservatives, not leftists, for the lack of common-sense gun control. It is simply laughable for Prager to claim that the left has “suppressed common sense” in our youth.
More children die of gunshots than any other cause. Death is obviously the most definitive way of ruining a child’s life. The availability of guns and unsafe storage of them is the main cause of this carnage. Canada’s gun owners are far more responsible: six child deaths per 100,000 versus 56 per 100,000 south of the border.
Public health services are the most effective pro-life organizations in world history. They are definitely not run by “leftists,” but Prager claims that children were required to wear masks because of them. A new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that mask mandates “resulted in 23% lower COVID-19 cases in staff and students than in schools without the requirement.”
Most of our youth would reject Prager’s absurd claim that climate scientists are “hysterical.” They rightly fear for their future and the lives of their children.
Gier taught religion and philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31 years. Email him at ngier006@gmail.com.
