6A II T U E S D AY , 0 5 .16 .17 II
COM
Mr. President,
please stop
the insults
CAL THOMAS
COLUMNIST
uring an interview
D last June in his
New York office, I
asked Donald Trump
about his use of lan-
guage that many considered insulting
and divisive. “Will there be a pivot for
you from the primaries to the general
election campaign?”
The candidate said “I agree” about
the tone of the campaign and that he
intended to pivot. We’re still waiting.
The president was within his rights
to discharge FBI Director James
Comey, but it is the way he did it,
sending a letter instead of a face-to-
face meeting or even a phone call,
that was disturbing. Comey was not
only blindsided when he learned of
his dismissal during a speech in Los
Angeles, the president called him
names and then tweeted that Comey
“…better hope that there are no
‘tapes’ of our conversations before he
starts leaking to the press!” Intimida-
tion is ugly and unbecoming for any
president. Comey’s sudden dismissal
is fueling suspicions there is more to
discover about alleged connections
between the Trump campaign and
Russia, something that has yet to be
proved.
Whatever Comey’s shortcomings,
he deserved better, even if only to
make the president look good. In an
interview with Lester Holt of NBC
News, the president called Comey “a
showboat” and said he was guilty of
“grandstanding.” Maybe so, but
wouldn’t the president have benefited
by thanking Comey for his years of
public service?
The president has threatened to
cancel the daily White House brief-
ings because he says he is moving so
fast his spokespeople don’t always get
it right. Fine, let him brief the press
directly as FDR and Coolidge did.
I voted for Trump and have appre-
ciated his promises to take the coun-
try in a better and more prosperous
direction. His selection of Neil Gor-
such for the Supreme Court and his
promise to fill lower courts with con-
stitutional conservatives has the po-
tential to place government back
within the boundaries the Founders
set for it. His businessman instincts
to reform a government that has be-
come bloated, dysfunctional and bur-
dened with debt are much needed.
However, the president’s goals are
hurt when he becomes the story.
Here are some positive sugges-
tions that might turn things around.
Find some positive things to say and
do. Unemployment has fallen to its
lowest level since 1988. Have some
newly employed people in, as he did
with the coal miners, some of whom
were unemployed or underemployed
during the Obama years. They could
thank the president for reducing
expensive regulations on businesses
that allowed them to hire more peo-
ple.
Trump should remind Americans
where he is trying to take the country.
Turn those constant tweets into posi-
tive statements.
Americans respond to optimism
(read Ronald Reagan’s speeches). Let
the Democrats own gloom and doom.
The president should rise above that
and rekindle an optimistic spirit that
has always led America to new
heights. Please knock off the insults,
Mr. President. They are poisoning
your presidency and the good you and
a Republican Congress can do.
Readers may email Cal Thomas at
tcaeditors@tribpub.com.
Help stop the persecution and purge in Turkey
AKIF AYDIN
GUEST COLUMNIST
resident Donald
P Trump will host
Turkish President
Recep Tayyip Erdogan in
the White House Tues-
day.
The meeting could shape the future
of relations. Turkey is a beacon for
democracy in the Middle East. The
United States has a vested interest in
cooperating with Turkey to fight ISIS.
But, we need a fair government that
protects justice and human rights. His-
tory is filled with dictators that the
United States had to intervene with
after they let them gain power, such as
Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Moam-
mar Kaddafi. This is the same situation
today if the United States does not cen-
sure Erdogan.
The Turkish people suffered a hor-
rific coup attempt on July 15, 2016.
Since then, human rights violations in
Turkey have reached an unprecedented
and dangerous high.
More than 130,000 government em-
GREENVILLEONLINE.
VOICES
Feeling aggrieved, evangelicals
see Trump as their defender
MICHAEL GERSON
COLUMNIST
WASHINGTON -
Even in an era of mar-
riage diversity, it re-
mains the most unlikely
match: Donald Trump
and his loyal evangelical base. In the
compulsively transgressive, foul-
mouthed, loser-disdaining billionaire,
conservative Christians “have found
their dream president,” according to
Jerry Falwell Jr.
In a recent analysis, the Pew Re-
search Center found more than three-
fourths of white evangelicals approve
of Trump’s job performance, most of
them “strongly.” With these evangeli-
cals comprising about a quarter of the
electorate, their support is the life
jacket preventing Trump from slipping
into unrecoverable political depths.
The essence of Trump’s appeal to
conservative Christians can be found
in his otherwise-anodyne commence-
ment speech at Liberty University.
“Being an outsider is fine,” Trump said.
And then promised: “As long as I am
president, no one is ever going to stop
you from practicing your faith.” Trump
presented evangelicals as a group of
outsiders, in need of a defender.
This sense of grievance and cultural
dispossession — the common ground
between The Donald and the faithful —
runs deep. Evangelicalism emerged
from the periodic mass revivals that
have burnt across America for 300
years. While defining this version of
Christianity is notoriously difficult, it
Letter on climate
data misleading
This letter is in response to a let-
ter in the May 2 Greenville News
titled “‘Higher” temperature data
misleading
It is difficult to know where to
start. First the writer makes many
claims and yet provides not a single
reference as to their validity. For
example: “It’s a fact…,” “many were
predicting,” “temperatures have
been warmer for most of our past
history,” “there are only 1 percent
that accurately measure the real
temperature,” “they have not proper-
ly accounted for the urban heat ef-
fect,” “In many cases,” “there has
been no measureable increase in
temperatures worldwide,” you get
the point. Give us some references.
Secondly, you cannot take data out
of context and expect to find the
truth. It is not difficult to find dec-
ades here and there with decreasing
temperatures. However, the earth
responds slowly so examine 5 year
running averages over time spans of
a century or more.
He also suggests that scientists do
not know how to measure the “real”
temperature and that they routinely
change the data to meet their no-
tions. Climate scientists (with very
rare exceptions) seek to learn the
truth by making acccurate, reliable
measurements of our earth. Their
children and grandchildren will live
here, too.
The letter was an attempt for the
writer to “mislead” us with carefully
selected, unreferenced “data” and
“facts” that have no basis in fact. I
saw a bumper sticker awhile back:
“The good thing about science is that
it is true whether you believe it or
not.”
Ben Sill
ployees have been fired or dismissed,
including prosecutors, judges, teachers
and doctors, with no right to appeal.
More than 40,000 have been detained or
arrested, while hundreds of media
outlets and newspapers have been tak-
en over, shut down or threatened by the
government. According to the watch-
dog group the Committee to Protect
Journalists, Turkey is the world’s lead-
ing jailer of journalists, and the coun-
try’s independent media has been deci-
mated.
Opposition civic society groups such
as Alevis, pro-Western liberals and
Hizmet participants, as well as ethnic
Kurds, are under constant pressure and
assault. Selahattin Demirtas, the chair-
man of Turkey’s third largest political
party HDP, has been imprisoned along
with other pro-Kurdish parliamentari-
ans.
Meanwhile, Turkey’s longstanding
role as an ally of the West and a force
against terrorism has been severely
eroded. Though Turkey has, in recent
history, been a stable force in an ex-
tremely volatile region - helping pro-
vide strategic assets in the fight against
involves (at least) a personal decision
to accept God’s grace through faith in
Christ and a commitment to live —
imperfectly — by to his example.
In the 19th century, evangelicals
(particularly of the Northern variety)
took leadership in abolitionism and
other movements of social reform. But
as a modernism based on secular scien-
tific and cultural assumptions took
control of institution after institution,
evangelicals often found themselves
dismissed as anti-intellectual rubes.
The trend culminated at the 1925
Scopes Monkey Trial, in which evolu-
tion and H.L. Mencken were pitted
against creation and William Jennings
Bryan. Never mind that Mencken was
racist, anti-Semitic and an advocate of
eugenics and that Bryan was the com-
passionate progenitor of the New Deal.
Fundamentalists (a designation adopt-
ed by many evangelicals) lost the fun-
damentalist-modernist controversy,
even in their own minds.
After a period of political dormancy
— which included discrediting slumber
during the civil rights movement —
evangelicals returned to defend Chris-
tian schools against regulation during
the Carter administration. To defend
against Supreme Court decisions that
put limits on school prayer and re-
moved state limits on abortion. To de-
fend against regulatory assaults on
religious institutions. Nathan Glazer
termed this a “defensive offensive” —
a kind of aggrieved reaction to the
perceived aggressions of modernity.
Those who might be confused by the
current state of evangelicalism should
LETTERS
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terrorism - domestic and foreign policy
trends under President Erdogan have
undermined Turkey’s strategic role,
posing enormous challenges for the US
and its allies. If the Turkish govern-
ment’s shift toward authoritarianism
continues, the US will find itself with-
out a reliable political, economic and
security partner in the region. The
country’s state of emergency - which
has been in effect since July 2016 -
enables President Erdogan’s authoritar-
ian behavior and only worsens this
disturbing trend.
The human rights and liberty are
founding principles of United States
and preserved by the Constitution. The
founding fathers were aware of the
universal significance of America’s
principles, and of America’s unique
responsibility for upholding and ad-
vancing these principles. As Thomas
Paine reminded patriots during the
America’s struggle for independence,
“The cause of America is in a great
measure the cause of all mankind.” The
American founders believed universal
truths and created one of the best mod-
els of liberty, not only for America, but
understand a few things:
First, evangelicals don’t have a body
of social teaching equivalent, say, to
Catholic social doctrine. Catholics are
taught, in essence, that if you want to
call yourself pro-life on abortion, you
also have to support greater access to
health care and oppose the dehuman-
ization of migrants. And vice versa.
Second, evangelicalism is racially
and ethnically homogeneous, which
leaves certain views and assumptions
unchallenged. The American Catholic
Church, in contrast, is one-third His-
panic, which changes the church’s
perception of immigrants and their
struggles.
Third, without really knowing it,
Trump has presented a secular version
of evangelical eschatology. When the
candidate talked of an America on the
brink of destruction, which could only
be saved by returning to the certainties
of the past, it perfectly fit the evangeli-
cal narrative of moral and national
decline.
In the Trump era, evangelicals have
gotten a conservative Supreme Court
justice for their pains — which is sig-
nificant. And they have gotten a leader
who shows contempt for those who
hold them in contempt — which is emo-
tionally satisfying.
The cost? Evangelicals have become
loyal to a leader of low character. They
have associated their faith with exclu-
sion and bias. And a movement that
should be known for grace is now
known for its seething resentments.
Michael Gerson’s email address is
michaelgerson@washpost.com.
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also for the whole world. These excep-
tional principles and values give Amer-
icans a very special role to play in the
world. Now it is the time to take that
role and help hundreds of thousands of
persecuted people in Turkey and help to
restore liberty, democracy and human
rights.
One of the simple ways to help is by
contacting our members of Congress
representing South Carolina and asking
them to call on President Erdogan and
the Turkish government to change
course, call off the state of emergency,
and abide by its commitments to human
rights, democracy and fundamental
freedoms.
America is not great because of its
prosperity and power; it is great be-
cause of Americans’ dedication for the
survival and the success of liberty not
only at home but also abroad.
Aydin is president of the Atlantic In-
stitute of South Carolina. Founded in 2010,
AISC is a statewide nonprofit organiza-
tion. Its goal is to promote dialogue
among people and toward issues that
pertain to their lives. Aydin can be
reached at aaydin@atlanticinstitutesc.org