Thinking It Through: Biden administration is off to an alarming start
By Richard Reeb
For the Victorville Daily Press
Forty years ago, newly elected President Ronald Reagan took office amidst a nearly mute liberal and media elite, stunned as they were that a man with political ideas and policies so clearly unsuitable for the country would actually have the opportunity to govern.
But President Joe Biden is doing all he can to ensure silence and not for just a while, but permanently.
As I wrote recently, outward appearances notwithstanding, our new president, by his inaugural address and in his actions, does not seek to unify the nation but to pull it into line. His campaign, constrained though it was, gave ample warning that he intended indiscriminately to reverse his predecessor’s policies and move toward the regimented state of shutting down opposition and institutionalizing rule by decree.
Thinking It Through: Under the current repression lies a moral, intellectual abyss
By Richard Reeb
For the Victorville Daily Press
Today the nation’s capital is occupied by 27,000 National Guard troops and the Capitol building is surrounded by a menacing wire fence. The ostensible object of this simultaneous display of military power and abject fear is to protect the people’s legislature from dangerous insurrectionists, like the rag-tag bunch that burst into the chambers of the Senate and House of Representatives on Jan. 6.
To call this an overreaction to a one-time event, however deplorable, is an understatement.
What can account for the unmistakably despotic display of power by those in charge of Washington, D.C. security? That such a move should be taken by the party that has for decades indulged or even encouraged dissent that so often became violent seems counterintuitive.
Thinking It Through: Advocates of sedition laws make strange bedfellows
By Richard Reeb
For the Victorville Daily Press
In the early 1960s, there was considerable campus debate about the freedoms of speech and press. This arose from the fact that federal and state governments in those days were concerned about Communist Party influence. But hanging like a pall over this effort was a parallel revulsion against the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the Wisconsin Republican who had been censured by his Senate colleagues for abusing his authority as chairman of the Government Operations Committee in his investigations of Communist influence in the federal government.
Your Letters: Jan. 7, 2021
Reader Submissions
Shoulder doesn t care
I was informed that there are 18 different regular annual Flu vaccine manufacturers. There is the cheap shot at $5 and the big shot at $70. Currently, there are only two different COVID-19 vaccines, but several more are coming. Does anyone wonder about Pharma sharing the different details or their care to tell the patients?
Al Rice, Apple Valley
‘1619 Project’?
Richard Reeb raises some important issues in his opinion piece of Dec. 30, “Where is America’s ‘systemic’ racism?” I agree with Mr. Reeb that, “there is indeed entrenched racism in our country.” However, he makes charges and statements which do not stand up to scrutiny.