Dr. Linda Petrou
Looking around the world we live in today is rather confusing and concerning. For example, I can understand arresting and putting on trial those individuals that went into the Capital on Jan 6th. I firmly believe most of them just got caught in the crowd and the excitement and were swept along. This is not an excuse but an attempt to understand what happened. Those that entered the building were, but a small number compared to the greater group. The notion of investigating all those that were there that day or even in MVD (Maryland, Virginia, DC) that day is rather concerning to me.
On the other hand, I am also deeply concerned that the large number of people that rioted, burned, looted and tore down structures after the George Floyd incident have never been investigated and/or charged. In fact, the original narrative of what happened is proving to be untrue. What happened was horrible as it is horrible when anyone dies and I am not excusing anyone for what they did that day. But Floyd was not killed by the police; he died of drug overdose and a bad heart due to misuse of drugs over a long period of time. Meantime we have torn apart our police structure based on this fallacy and as a result crime has soared.
Another thing that has always confused me is why do we have ballots in many languages available for citizens to use. Under the Voting Rights Act this is required. The reasoning for this is that new citizens might have problems speaking and writing and reading English and it would not be fair to them. However, one of the requirements to become a citizen is a command of the English language.
Harvard University is the gold standard as far as universities go. One of the “rules” in the academy is the prohibition against plagiarism – taking the words of another without attribution. It is ok to use another’s words but you have to cite them. Even if you paraphrase someone else’s words, you have to cite them. Plagiarism is the most egregious offense any student and/or professor can commit. For a student, punishment can go from an F in a class to expulsion from the school. For a professor it normally leads to firing. Even in the world outside a college/university it has dire consequences. Joe Biden had to suspend his campaign for the Presidency years ago because he had used the words of a British politician in a speech without giving him credit for them. Yet here comes Claudine Gay the president of Harvard University who plagiarized at least 50 times (including in her dissertation) and the liberals are defending her because she is black. They are saying that it is right wing conspiracy to remove the first black female president of Harvard. They are saying it is racist to remove her for this. No what is racist is the fact that they are holding her to a lessor standard because she is black. What is also interesting and is not getting as much airtime is the fact that one of the individuals she plagiarized numerous times is Carol Swain, a retired professor from Vanderbilt who has published numerous books and articles and appears on TV frequently and is a black female. But the problem with Carol is that she is also a conservative Republican. If Harvard wants to have a black female president I would suggest Carol. At the very least Harvard needs to publicly apologize to Carol for the harm that has been done to her by Gay stealing her work and calling it her own.
And one final thought. Our national debt is now $34 TRILLION. It is a figure that is, in a sense, meaningless, as we cannot comprehend a number that large. But a number we can comprehend is the 300,000+ illegals that crossed our border in December (and that does not include the “gotaways”). One way to grasp that number is that it is the approximate number of people that live in Pittsburgh or Seattle for example. Each month the number grows. So what do these figures indicate – we are a nation in decline and our leaders don’t care as they have theirs.
And all of that is just what is happening in the US. Worldwide the story is the same – massive incompetence on the part of our government. One example. In the Middle East our military forces have been attacked 115 times since autumn by Iran proxy militias and we have done almost nothing. To add to this inaction, it now appears our Secretary of Defense has been in the hospital (ICU) for a week and didn’t tell anyone including the President. Reminds me of our Transportation Secretary who took months off of work due to the birth of his twins. Both he and his husband took the time to bond with them. But again no one was told.
Everywhere you look our government has deteriorated rapidly in the last three years. Whether it is the military unable to meet their quotas or the mail not getting delivered or the police being unable to do their job or massive gangs of young men robbing and looting stores to the point that most items are locked away and stores are closing but the robbers are not being caught and prosecuted to rapid inflation and on and on; people we are in trouble. We say it all the time, this is the most important election ever; well this REALLY is the most important election. If we lose we lose our country.
Dr. Linda Petrou is a retired college professor specializing in International Relations and Political Science. She has been active in the Republican Party since handing out campaign literature in High School. Petrou has been vice chair of Forsyth County and of the 6th Congressional District. Currently she is chair of the of the National Federation of Republican Women’s Resolution Committee and chair of the Bylaws Committee of the Forsyth County Republican Women and the North Carolina Federation of Republican Women. She was recently elected Chairwoman of the NC 10th Congressional District.