First, I would like to thank the Editor for allowing me to share my opinion (and that of many other Newbergians) and encouraging dialogue.
Along with most of the folks I know in Newberg, I number myself among the many in the community who I consider to be God-fearing people who have been stunned by societal changes in the past two decades.
The Graphic refers to the current school board as “embattled”, but that’s hyperbole at best. A very small group is essentially protesting that things aren’t going their way because the voters made a choice that caused this group’s tantrum. I could find many more folks that don’t like the left-leaning “news” the Graphic puts out, and it would be then true to say “the embattled Newberg Graphic“, but to overstate the impact of a handful of protesters is slight-of-hand journalism…just like the big boys in the industry.
So what do you do when you’re Lefty toes are stepped on? You gather moral and monetary support from your Democrat friends, create a nice, safe-sounding name like CARE, and hope that people don’t notice that you’re essentially the same group behind the FAILED recall efforts to earlier unseat two of the elected school board members. But putting lipstick on a pig doesn’t change its nature, and hopefully voters with both brains and values will see through this ruse.
In 1987, long before the current nonsense, Allan Bloom wrote in his best-selling book The Closing of the American Mind, “there is now an entirely new language of good and evil, originating in an attempt to get ‘beyond good and evil’ and preventing us from talking with any conviction about good and evil anymore” (p. 141).
Our kids are the nation’s future, but they are confused, and with good reason. From the attempts to redefine marriage, to the idea of inventing multiple genders besides the two sexes determined at birth, to pushing transgender conversion, to an emphasis and encouragement of same-sex attraction, to isolation during the Pandemic, to Antifa violence, the BLM movement and violence in the news (and in video games, TV and movies), the rewriting of history with the 1619 project, and the divisive Critical Race Theory, how do our kids hope to survive the barrage that’s thrown at them? Add to this an agenda-laden media and federal government that can hardly be trusted to bear truth. Bloom also writes on p. 119 “The important lesson that the family taught was the existence of the only unbreakable bond [the family], for better or for worse, between human beings…. The decomposition of this bond is surely America’s most urgent social problem.” It’s up to adults, VOTING ADULTS, to help them. Vote intelligently, wisely, studiously, and prayerfully.
Philosopher John Stuart Mill in 1867, said, “Let not anyone pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject.”
Similarly, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, when standing up to Hitler, is credited with saying, “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” (www.goodreads.com.quotes, April 2023). He was murdered by the 3rd Reich in 1945 for his stand for truth.
Don’t Californicate our kids. Be wise…see what’s really going on here. Don’t let a small, pouting group use their ruse and cute name to win hearts. The minds of our kids are too important. Keep the incumbents on the school board – Dave Brown, Shelley Kolb, and Raquel Peregrino de Brito – and fill the two open positions with Chris Irwin and Sue Osborne. To a person, these people are committed to a vigorous academic curriculum that will equip our kids to achieve academic success and prepare them to be productive citizens.
May God grant our community His blessings.
Sincerely,
Dr. Dan Carpenter
Yes, let us all stand and be counted, our votes that is! We’ve almost got the job done. The Progressive Rick Rogers city council has been replaced with people that are focused on public safety and services like street repair, lowering taxes,lowering water bills, and adding new employment. Now, let’s elect a school board that is focused on education, not political and sexual indoctrination. Vote!