Indiana Gazette from Indiana, Pennsylvania • 2

Viewpoint "The Gazette wants to be the friend of every man, the promulgator of all that nght, a welcome guest in the home. We want to build up, not tear down; to help, not to hinder; and to assist every worthy person in the community without reference to race, religion or politics. Our cause will be the broadening and bettering of the county's interests." Indiana Gazette, 1890 Friday, October 6, 2000 Page 2 The Indiana Gazette Lessons from icons of goodwill versity; our magnificent new technologies of communications promote divisiveness diat degrades the human spirit. The political content of newspapers and TV, she thinks, has become too "loud, violent, cynical, superficial and everyone is deafened by It." It reminded me of die mid-1950s, when a contingent of young lexans in Waslungton, including Les and Liz Carpenter and several congressional couples, gadiered almost weekly at one or another of our houses. Craving familiar accents and any news from home, we'd play charades and sing hymns.

Liz always brought a songbook from die Methodist church in Salado, her childhood home. Here in America, harried millions have escaped the malingering hatreds of long-dead generational vendettas that flourished in their former homelands. May ours be good will's historic sanctuary. (Jim Wright of Fort Worth is a former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

You can write him at SO. Box 1413, FortWorth, IX 76101, or at j.whghttcu.edu. Visit the Star-Telegram's online services on the World Wide Web: "Start With ALaugh." For 253 pages, Uzs lucid prose, ostensibly designed as a guide to effective public speaking, tells stories botii humorous and inspiring, relates a hundred or more examples of positive human behavior, peels the mask off hypocrisy so gendy that it doesn't leave a welt, and pokes fun at almost everybody (mostly herself) without ever being unkind. To a luncheon gathering of fellow Democrats, Lyndon B. Johnson's sometimes speech writer and Lady Bird's White House press secretary read a funny congratulatory letter that she'd received on her 80th birthday from former President George Bush.

The Bush message was hilarious, telling Liz that maturi ty was a time of change and inviting her to change parties. "This is what politics ought to be about," Liz said with a laugh, "pleasuie instead of poison." That description, I think, pretty well describes her book. Proud of her longtime role as a reporter and grateful to have rubbed elbows with so many of the nation's greats, the white-haired octogenarian worries some today about die shrillness of modem journalism. Too often, Liz suggested a few years ago in a speech at Boston Uni he declared, "I asked people, 'Why do you Wiesel concludes that sides have been taught to hate, regaled from youth with bitter talcs of injustices perpetrated against their fellow religionists in previous generations, which they now are made to feel personally responsible to avenge violently. "The quest for vengeance," he believes, can be die prime "motivator of fanaticism" and "incubator of violence" ad infinitum, unless it be converted by acts of positive good will.

"I belong to a generation that felt abandoned by God and betrayed by humanity," Wiesel declares. Yet, he insists, it Is the essential responsibility of us each "never to be alienated from either." Our other visitor, unlike Wiesel, is an old friend. I've known Liz Carpenter since we were tmdergrads at the University of Texas at Austin, where she became the first female student ever chosen as student body vice president. Liz has been blazing trails ever since. Her weapon of choice is humor.

Author of presidential speeches, three previous books and countless news dispatches chronicling the lives and times of our past 11 presidents, Liz Carpenter, now 00, was in town promoting her new book. By JIM WRIGHT Fort Worth Star-Telegram Two remarkably different visitors to Fort Worth in the past couple weeks have renewed my appreciation for the simple, regenerative quality that they hoth possess in such abundance: pure, unfeigned good will. How we need it! Our nation needs it, as docs humankind. The first visitor I had read but neither met nor heard. Hie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate, held an audience of 3,000 at Texas Christian University transfixed for 45 minutes as he talked, witiiout notes, from the deep well of his awn sometimes tortured human experience.

Wiescl's manner was solemn and scholarly, his subject the causes and mortal dangers of fanaticism. His message: the redemptive qualities of hope and good will. "I don't hate the Germans," Wiesel said. "I know diat hatred in the end destroys the hater." Confessing anger and exasperations at fanaticisms destructiveness, he expresses pity for its perpetrators, "who are themselves its victims." The founder of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C, told of his recent trips to Bosnia. "Everywhere," Dane vote not a Dead heat humanoids By MAUREEN DOWD N.Y.

Times News Service WASI UNGTON TUcsday was an evening of biology as destiny, genetically groomed specimens caught up in a batlle over prescription drugs, die gulf between rich and poor, and apocalyptic pronouncements about die fate of the post-millennial world. That was die TV show you wanted to watch, over on Fox. "Dark Angel" had everything the presidential debates did not. Snappy dialogue. Captivating style.

Gripping fight scenes. A compelling star, 19-year-old Jessica Alba, as Max, the bicycle messenger in a Blade Runner world who has black-lcathcr altitude and a bar code stamped on her neck denoting her souped-up DNA. Max knows how to handle the Unexpected, and it's not by distributing hugs and tears to the dispossessed or even by inviting ex-Russian prime ministers over to her crib. She is not just a Reformer with Results. She's a Reformer with lips.

And, unlike Al Gore, she knows how to apply makeup so that she doesn't look like a big, orange, waxy, wicklcss candle. On "Dark Angel," Americas technology has been vitiated by terrorists who tossed up an electromagnetic pulse. At least there was a pulse. On the networks, you could find the fiatlhiing show you didn't want to watch, the tantric debate between the Insufferable and the Insufficient. I wanted to strangle Gore and slap Bush.

I wanted the Dark Angel to hang both these weenies out of a window by their ankles, as she did some pushy, tattooed blonde. To borrow Max's lingo, I was not loving hanging in social studies class with prissy rich dudes yapping about the land of milk and honey, blah, blah, blah. I wanted to jet. A Max observation summed up my feelings about the Oedipal one-upmanship of Bush and Gore: "I actually feel sorry for guys sometimes. They're prisoners of their genes." are dogs," her lesbian pal retorted.) Tliis was die first debate, after all, that seemed genetically determined.

Al Gore senior was a famous Soudiern orator who taught liis son to get used to settings where he had to talk. George Bush senior was a famous New England non-orator who taught his son to be wary of settings where he had to talk. Gore learned from his father the value of old-fashioned populism, making a case to the people. W. learned from his father the value of old-fashioned elitism, not having to make a case to the people.

W. did not check liis watch, as dad did. But he was just as eager to see die clock run out. He acted annoyed, in a genial way, when Al Gore filibustered and direw in brain twisters. But W.

did not try very hard to wrest back die microphone. The microphone is not his friend. It was reminiscent of the scene in "Nordi by Northwest," when Cary Grant (VV.) is hanging on to the Mount Rushmore precipice by his fingertips and Martin Landau (Gore) is grinding his foot into Cary's hand. policy riffs were filled, as the jazz critic Whitney Balliett wrote ofTh-elonious Monk, "with dissonances and rhythms that often give one the sensation of missing the bottom step in the dark." Why docs a man who has to be confronted with die inquisitive specter of Jim Lehrer to concentrate his mind on issues believe he is ready to be president? Al Gore was taught formal intellectual policy discourse at his father's knee. W.

was taught informal bull sessions with the inner circle at his fa-tiler's knee. Al Gore was never a natural performer, like his fadier, so he worked harder on his homework. If he could not be charming, he would be dogged. So now, in debates, he is doomed to be Annoying Boy, apple-polishing and doing that smug-mugging. Asked on CNN about his unvocalized but audible condescension, Gore explained that he thought his sighing was off-the-record: "Under the debate rules we were told there was going to be no coverage of our reactions when the other guy was talking," he said fastidiously.

The vicu president showed he was ready for the Oval Office. Still, you wanted to pull down his collar and see if there was a bar code on the back of his neck. He seems like a genetically engineered politician prototype, but with something slightly off as though the scientists in the lab didn't give die beaker that extra shake. The game of let's pretend' By CHARLEY REESE King Features Syndicate Let's play "let's pretend." Let's pretend Suzy, an innocent citizen, and Joe, a cop, arc forced to deal with the same criminal, Zack. One night, Zack catches Suzy on the way to her car in a parking lot.

beats the slew out of her and rapes her. Now, the gun-control crowd absolutely insists that Suzy does not need a handgun in order to deal with Zack. So an unarmed Suzy becomes Zack's victim. Foe the cop tracks down Zack and puts his worthless carcass in the can. What's the difference? Joe was armed with a handgun when he had to deal with Zack.

Now you tell me what warped, sick logic says that the victim of a criminal should not have a handgun while the policeman who arrests the very same criminal should have a handgun. If, as die gun-control crowd claims, Suzy doesn't need a handgun in her encounter with the criminal, why does the policeman? After all, Joe the cop is bigger than Suzy. Why does he need a weapon? How can people who live in gated communities with armed guards argue that us common folk must be disarmed? I say, take down your gates and fire your armed guards. I say to politicians, get rid of your bodyguards. I say to Congress, tell the Capitol Police to go write traffic tickets, you no longer need their arms to protect you.

I say to the president, get rid of the Secret Service or at least take the agents' guns away from them. Disarm every one of die 60,000 federal officials currently authorized to carry handguns. It seems to me that eidier we all disarm or we all arm. It seems to me unacceptably illogical to argue that crime victims must be unarmed while the police, dealing with the very same criminals, should be armed. This business of the elitists living behind the protection of pistols telling the common folk you must not have firearms smacks of totalitarianism.

It was clearly the intent of the Founding Fathers diat every American be armed. That's why die ancient Anglo-Saxon right to keep and bear amis was included in the Bill of Rights. And the amendment says "right of the people," not right of the states or right of the militias. All honest scholars agree that in every instance that the Bill of Rights uses the word "people," it is referring to individual rights. I know millions of Americans today suffer from urban psychosis in which their world view is distorted by dishonest politicians and even more dishonest media, as well as by their miserable environment of stone, concrete and asphalt.

But the facts arc simple: A handgun is a tool, just like a saw or a hammer. It is an ideal tool for self-defense. With a handgun, 90-pound Suzy can stop 2011-pound Zack. After Samuel Colt invented his revolver, a common saying in America was, "God created all men, but Sam Colt made them equal." And so he did. You don't have to be built like a linebacker or invest five years of sweat in becoming a martial artist.

You can defend yourself quite well with a handgun with just a Jit tie bit of practice and common sense. It is, in fact, an ideal tool for women and for the elderly. Gun control has always been an elitist method of controlling the common folk. It's always been racist. New York City's first gun-control laws were aimed at those immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe that the hoity-toity types viewed as vermin.

In the South, gun-control laws most often applied only to blacks. NeverUieless, If the urban insane wish to be prey for predators, dial's their privilege. But no one has the right to tell someone else that he or she cannot possess the tools necessary to defend his or her life and the lives of loved ones. Europe It liberates Europe's full potentialities. Let reality be recognized.

Let there be several "Europes" with different and parallel powers and ambitions. There already is a big, 15-nation economic and trading Europe, with a single market, common standards and a powerful international presence. It could easily expand. There is a banking, financial and investment "Euroland" of 11 states, (plus one Greece is about to join), which possesses a single currency and central bank. There is an integrated high-technology Europe of Airbus, space launchers, military aerospace, computer-aided design, leading-edge electronic communications, etc.

There is a geopolitical and strategic Europe, pushed by France and (improbably but increasingly) by Britain, acquiesced in by Germany, Spain and Benelux, promising to act in the world through "coalitions of the willing." And there should be a much wider Europe of limited but progressive integration, focusing on social issues and economic development including Central, Eastern and Baltic countries as yet unable to meet the standards for hill membership. The original European ambition, as expressed by Jean Monnet, was an intimate association of a limited number of peoples closely bound by religion, culture and a terrible 20Ui-century history. Their intimacy could not be extended indefinitely. Nor do other Europeans want the same intimacy. That is what the Danes, wordlessly, have said.

A multiple and protean Europe is not the Europe the European unity movement has wanted. It nonetheless would seem the Europe that Europeans want, and it is more interesting and versatile, and potentially more influential, than the Europe wliich now exists. (USPS 262-040) Published by THE INDIANA PltifJTlNfi PUBLISHING COMPANY 8W Wo ler Street Indlnnn, PA. 1570J (724) 4 65-3555 EstabUslietl In 1830 On the Internet: indlanaguctlcccxn Publisher 19I3-IB70 MICY R. DONNELLY Publisher 1S70-1993 IDE DONNELLY Chairman ofThc Board Cn-PunlkhcfEilltor IC1 IAELJ.

DONNEII President Co-Publisher I (ASHE D. KINTER Secretary Assistant Treasurer STAGED. COTTPREDSON Trwuuiw Aulstanl Secretary Manager Director iosepiii.ceary ROBRIfrYESIIjDNIS. LYNN SCOTT Editor CAI1 A. KOIOGIE Li c.tL,r CARRIER SUBSCRIPTION RATES Paid in fld- blow to mission, is not yet a success.

The European governments have recently been acting over its head, and there is talk of reducing its role In certain areas. This has been another cause of stalemate. Now the Danes have handed the European Commission and its member-governments a knife to cut through this knot of problems, conflicting interests and unresolved ambitions. The Danes have determined that if Europe includes them, it will be a multiple Europe, with more than one level of membership. They want to be members of the EU, but on their terms.

They do not want the common currency. They place a limit on the degree of sovereignty they arc prepared to transfer to Brussels. They do not want to become part of federal union modeled on Germany. They do not want to be part of a "Europe of regions" (which the Belgians like because it seems a solution to their regional linguistic conflict), with traditional state power devolved downward toward regional authorities and upward to Europe. They are skeptical about France's vision of a unified Europe with independent foreign and defense policies that challenge the United Slates.

But contrary to what most European commentators have been saying, all this is not a blow to "Europe." out of ignorance. Most are not planned. Most are not wanted. They are mentally, emotionally and physically abused by a parent who doesn't know any better. Most are bom with birth defects.

Most grow up to repeat the vicious cycle with tiieir own children. Why aren't these individuals given mandatory birth-control shots or vasectomies or tubal ligations? They are not mentally capable of caring for children. Some will argue that it is their given right. How can anyone argue that it is their right when the people I am talking about can't even comprehend the right to reproduce? I ask, where are the children's rights? I venture to say that none of these abused and neglected children wotdd choose to be conceived if they knew what life had in store for diem. Help these children to not be conceived.

In turn, you will also be helping to minimize the problems that their parents have by not compounding dieir problems by having' children they are not capable of caring for. I also suggest mandatory sterilization for sex offenders. Don't give them a second chance to harm again. For those who disagree, you have never spoken with or looked into the eyes of the innocent victims. Volunteer yourself or your children to spend some time in the households of diese people, letting them do whatever they want and see if you change your mind about whoshould have "rights." I have seen people fight viciously for animal rights.

How about fightinR for the rights of the children as viciously? Stop the cycle so that the suffering can stop. Renee Miller .0 Indiana that have abandoned national currencies for the euro, have already yielded a crucial part of their national sovereignties to the European Central Bank. This is what the Danes, and on present evidence the Swedish and British, refuse. Since the euro's creation, Europe's only significant progress has been in external relations, by establishing a foreign and security policy office and a decision to establish a military force under independent European Union authority. This was provoked by their experience of military Intervention in Kosovo under NATO command.

The 15 EU nations are supposed to rewrite the existing European Union treaties at a meeting in Nice in December. This is to prepare the union to accommodate the former Communist nations, when these meet the EU's membership criteria. But this "widening" of the union to take in new members conflicts with the EUs ambition to "deepen" integration and federal union, producing stalemate, which in essential respects is likely to persist at Nice. This stalemate has left the Central and Eastern Europeans frustrated and annoyed, while the institutions of European Union languish. The new European Commission, the EU executive, led by Romano Prodi, which was itself just reformed after the inadequacies and cronyism demonstrated by die previous com Letters your smoke alarms every 10 years.

Working smoke alarms provide an early warning and give you the critical extra seconds to escape a fire. This is particularly important to children and seniors who are at the most risk of dying in a home fire. I urge all the area residents to adopt this simple lifesaving habit: Change the batteries in smoke alarms when changing the clock; protect your family against the devastating effects of a home fire. Charles It Kelly, Fire Chief Indiana Fire Association Challenged should not nave children I would like to know why die lawmakers and U.S. citizens do not help abused children by not allowing the severely mentally challenged and SSI (Supplemental Security Income) recipients to conceive.

It has been officially determined by the Social Security Administration diat these unfortunate individuals arc unable to support and care for themselves, so how can they possibly raise a child? Anyone witii children knows how difficult it can be, so imagine being mentally challenged andor addicted to drugs andor alcohol and trying to do 1l Therefore, I ask the world, Where's the justice in letting babies be born to a parent who is not capable of caring for themselves, let alone a child? Most of these babies are conceived By WILLIAM PFAFF Los Angeles Times Syndicate PARIS Denmark's vote on September 28 to reject the European common currency, the euro, has generally been interpreted as a blow to European federation. This is quite wrong. It has made federation possible. By declaring that they want "Europe" but Europe on their own terms the Danes (endorsed by majority opinion in Sweden and Britain) have freed the other Europeans to make their own versions of Europe, including a true federation of core Europe. Since even before the single currency's creation, Europe has suffered from the contradiction between the proclaimed ambition of a federated Europe and the promise made to incorporate Eastern and Central European states manifestly unready for full integration.

Federation itself also still remains a matter lor definition. Conflicting views were expressed earlier this year by a German minister, Joschka Fischer, reiterating Germany's desire to see a true federal union, modeled on the German federation of semi-autonomous lander, and France's president, Jacques Clilrac, restating the established French aim of a union of nation-states. However actions have always spoken more loudly than words in Uie European Union, and die 11 members, led by France and Germany, Time to change batteries As die fall time change approaches, I want to remind die residents of the Indiana area to make another change that could save their lives changing the batteries in their smoke alarms. The simple yet powerful act of changing the batteries in smoke alarms when you change the clock on Oct. 29 can cut a family's risk of dying in a home fire in half.

As a 26-year veteran of the fire service, I have witnessed first-hand the tragedy and devastation of home fires. It's even more heartbreaking when a young life is cut short Each day, an average of three children die in household fires in the United States. Overall, 84 percent of the home fire deaths in this country occur in homes witiiout working smoke alarms. Changing batteries in smoke alarms twice a year is one of the simplest, most effective ways to reduce these tragic dcatiis and injuries. In addition, take the time to test the detectors once a month.

Make a fire escape plan with two ways out of every room and then practice it with your family. Considering diat fire deaths peak in the winter months, it just makes sense to change your smoke alarm batteries every fall I also recommend diat you replace rour weexs, ai-iu; Thirteen weeks, S37.20, Twenty-six weeks. MOTOR ROUTE SUBSCRIPTION HATES Paid In advance lo Gazette office pour weeks, SI 2J5; Thincen weeks. 437.60; Iwcnty-sbc weeks, 475.40; Fifty- two weeks, $1 502S. StINDAYONLY SUBSCRIPTION RATES Paid in advance to Gatci ic office liY CARRlEn Iwoniy-fttx weeks.

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