This is Viewpoints for Friday, September 22, 2017

Water and ice

Responding to the Mick Collins response to the Debbie Coquerel letter, the problem with the former’s point about sea level rise due to melting ice is that the oceans are not a glass of water. A significant volume of natural ice in the world is not floating in the ocean, as a cube of ice will in a glass. This ice is resting on rock, and not floating. When it melts it enters the nearest liquid water body, and increases the volume of that water body. An ice cube balanced on a knife that bridges the rim of a glass full of water will cause the glass to overflow.

New and outdated?

If you are planning on buying a new car and looking for a CD player my new car does not have one. If you want a GPS mine does not have a true GPS. It has only turn by turn. It does not have a map and you have to call OnStar to get it downloaded to your radio which is an extra cost. Also, you don’t need the extended warranty, our new gar is made by GM and it comes with a five-year bumper to bumper warranty, which we were not told about.

Don’t believe anything a salesman tells you, check it out for yourself. Ask questions and make him show you what comes with the new car. We trusted our salesman since we have bought several new cars and trucks from him over the past 10 years. The salesman told us CD players would not be in the new cars because they were outdated. We have a 2016 vehicle and it has a CD player. We did ask for a refund on the extended warranty which was over $3,000, but we never got it.

Change history?

I have observed the leftists and guilt-ridden whites push and support their agendas to erase the history of the Civil War. If they do, what will they come up with next to complain about and be offended by? Will they want to do away with Ford? How about Chevrolet? Henry Ford was a rich man and so was Louis Chevrolet. Do we have to rename our cars? Why not, we renamed streets.

Before anyone jumps to pull the race card, I do not support any hate groups such as the neo-Nazis, white supremacists, BLM, Antifa, KKK or any others destructive groups. I have always shown respect for all races until they make it clear that they don’t deserve respect.

I disagree with a recent movement to take down Confederate statues. The wealthy and politicians start wars, but few fight in them. They buy their way out and sit back and get fat on war profits. That soldier statue, that “offends” so many, dedicated to a young man, probably a farmer, or longshoreman or roustabout that got caught up in a mercantile war, had nothing to do with slaves. He probably worked hand-in-hand with them and never had a problem. He knew nothing of the rhetoric thrown around about secession and states’ rights and slavery. What he knew was that a military force came to his state and burned and looted. Was he correct? Was the Union army correct?

Just because a small number of people who are also ignorant of history decide to misuse symbols does not mean the symbols are racist. What if a black hate group rallied beneath a statue of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.? Are you going to remove it because they were “offended”? Of course not. No one ever learned history from a statue, nor did anyone ever get truly “offended” by one. Statues are inanimate objects that have no voice. At least no one got offended until the television started showing and featuring malcontents.

When is it going to stop? George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant all owned slaves. Did you know that Grant did not free his slaves until after the 13th Amendment in December of 1865? Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee freed his slaves (which he never purchased — they were inherited) in 1862! Are you going to tear down their statues? Are you going to change all our currency to appease Black Lives Matter and the white guilt groups? The community leaders have little to do with offended citizens; they represent themselves and only themselves.

We should learn from history and not try to change it. Wouldn’t it be great if the alt-right and the Antifa factions and BLM could meet in the middle? Maybe instead of a divided nation with each group pushing their own agendas, we could become a united nation again.

Encroachment not gone

A recent call to the Middle Georgia Regional Commission to inquire if encroachment at Robins Air Force Base has been ended brought a surprising response from a spokeswoman. She told me that it was not finished as there are still homes to be purchased. No celebration date is on their calendar.

But at a recent National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association monthly meeting in the Wellston Center the mayor of Warner Robins, Randy Toms, proudly stated that encroachment had been successfully eliminated and resolved. That the base was ready for a BRAC visit.

As former Maj. Gen. Rick Goddard stated after he retired and worked for the 21st Century Partnership over a decade or so ago, apathy of the folks in Middle Georgia is the greatest threat to our base’s survival after a BRAC.

Dr. Dan Callahan’s old acronym, “Every Day In Middle Georgia Is Armed Forces Day,” meant little in the face of the massive citizen apathy in Middle Georgia about the survival of RAFB. Most locals still think the base will always be there. They still do.

New civil war?

The new confederacy and the upcoming civil war is almost upon us, but not in a way that most suspect. As an interested student of American history, the writings I have read describing the causes of the first American Civil War have all indicated a strong sense of individual states’ rights over a central federal government managing the affairs of the states collectively.

Recent conversations with family members living in California, with confirmation from national news stories, describe their dismay with the recent vote by the California legislature to reject the federal laws and policies regarding the identification and control of those living in the state illegally, and establish a “sanctuary state.”

This is closely akin to the Kansas/Nebraska act of 1854, heralded by many historians as “the single most significant event leading to the Civil War.” Fort Sumter has been fired upon again, but this time from Sacramento.

This story was originally published September 21, 2017 at 9:00 PM with the headline "This is Viewpoints for Friday, September 22, 2017."