Casper Star Tribune Sinks to New Journalistic Low

Fair and Balanced reporting of the news helps people learn the necessary facts and make day to day decisions in an informed manner.

Unfair and unbalanced reporting harms people by leading them to make decisions without access either to accurate information, or to a fair representation of all points of view.

In Evanston, Casper and most Wyoming towns, citizens are subjected to a news monopoly. If their newspaper does not fairly and accurately inform its readership of the news they need, those citizens are harmed substantially, and the community is worse off as a result.

For these reasons, the fourth estate, must maintain high ethical standards. Without them, they abuse their public trust.

Walter Cronkite

Back in the day when we had only three television networks (for you youngsters, they were ABC, NBC, and CBS) there was a heightened sense of ethical integrity among the news producers. We can argue about how well they lived up to their own ethical standards, but it is inarguable that they wanted us to believe they did.

As cable TV came on the scene, two things changed. First, the advent of 24/7 news required the creation of more and more news content. Stories that were merely local news, and that would never have made the national news on the three major networks, suddenly became huge news stories.

O.J. Simpson

Who can forget watching O.J. Simpson’s white Ford Bronco driving down an L.A. Freeway followed by a posse of police cars? Interesting? Sure. Newsworthy? Only as a carnival attraction.

This glut of irrelevant content led to a second change. How does a cable show gain a following when everybody is watching all the same irrelevant content? Rupert Murdock answered by tailoring the news for a particular audience.

Between CNN and Fox, let’s not get into the argument of who became partisan first. The point is that partisan news is now a reality – and has been for quite some time. Other players have since entered the fray and created ever more partisan news.

The gloves have come off. The strict ethical line between reporting the facts and advocating for a world-view has been erased. Advocacy journalism has replaced objective reporting. While the networks each still claim to be the paragon of journalism, nobody really believes it. Rather, cable news has become just as partisan as the parties themselves.

Before the advent of cable news, we could all watch the same three networks without serious argument. The only rule of thumb was that it was impolite to talk politics in public. Now, cable news has become so politicized that we have a new rule of thumb. It is impolite to watch your favorite cable news channel in public.

We have become tribalized, and cable news has been a huge contributing factor. That is a bad thing.

But what is worse is when the degradation of journalistic standards on cable news bleeds over into local news. At least there is an economic explanation for why cable news has gone tribal. They are each trying to make a profit and so seeking out a niche of news consumers.


But in markets that have only one newspaper, there is no profit in partisan attacks on the subscriber-base, especially when that party is 70%-90% of the voting public. Such newspapers should be seeking the broadest possible respect. Editors and publicists alike have an economic interest in scrupulously cultivating the public’s trust.

This means journalistic ethics. Ethics are not laws. They are not enforceable in a court of law, nor should they be. The freedom of speech is too valuable of an asset to run the risk of shutting it down by judges and politicians.

Journalistic ethics have been developed by journalists themselves for their own protection. They are guidelines on how to earn and keep the public’s trust. They have been learned in the school of hard knocks by journalists who violated them and lost the respect of their readership.

Journalists once learned to apply strict rules to themselves so that their own party politics would be subordinated to the journalistic task. But, alas, those days are over. Today it’s “monkey see, monkey do.”

Journalistic ethics in cable news has fallen so far that cable news can no longer be consumed in mixed company. In just the same way, we are witnessing our own local newspapers devolve into the same partisan screeds.

Arno Rosenfeld, Star-Tribune

Take, for example, a pair of articles recently printed in the Casper Star Tribune. The first one was written by Arno Rosenfeld. The title begins, “Wyoming GOP county chair shares article...” “Shares article,” it says, referring to Facebook. The entire article is an expose̒ of the Facebook feed of a Campbell County woman who was recently appointed to fill a vacancy in the county Republican Party.

The article takes her to task for the crime of hitting the “share” button after reading an article from the National Review written by Lloyd Marcus, a nationally syndicated columnist. As is obvious from the title, the Casper Star is intent on using the opportunity to tar and feather the Wyoming GOP.

That is, of course, their prerogative. If the editors of the Casper Star want to use their print-monopoly to advance partisan politics at the expense of a housewife whom they deem to be a “public figure,” that’s their business. But it’s bad for business. They have squandered any remaining legitimacy they might claim as a non-partisan news-source for the citizens of Wyoming.

They have abused their public trust. If you doubt me on that point, try this thought experiment. Imagine if the Casper Star had published a front-page article critiquing the Facebook page of Sheila McGuire, the Uinta county Democrat chair, or Karl Allred, the Republican chair. That would be the local equivalent, and it would be outrageous.

On a Facebook forum, I asked what would happen if every county chair in Wyoming had a letter to the editor written about their own Facebook feed. Fellow Christians rebuked me for suggesting something unethical. They were right.

Such exposes would be unethical as letters to the editor, much less as front-page stories. The editors of the Casper Star Tribune ought to be ashamed of themselves. They have sunk to a new low in journalistic ethics.

The Monday after their partisan screed filled the front page, Arno Rosenfeld, the author, announced that he was no longer employed by the Star Tribune. This gave me the stirrings of hope that they had seen their ethical lapse and were taking corrective action.

Vicki KIssack, Facebook photo

But alas, no announcement confirmed this thought. Rather, the following Sunday, the Star Tribune editorial board doubled down on their bullying tactics. Mrs. Kissack was again castigated as a “public figure” who said, “something inaccurate.” (Public figures must be mindful of their words, May 20, 2018).

In the inaccuracy-laced editorial that followed, her particular inaccuracy was never cited, only (mis)characterized. Nevertheless, they ended by advising her: “keep your opinions to yourself.” They apparently missed the irony of opining that certain opinions shouldn’t be allowed.

Let’s be clear. The only people who can apply journalistic ethics are the journalists themselves. The rest of us can sense when they are broken, but we can do nothing about it when journalists break trust with us. Most people vote with their feet.

Newspapers, which once thrived, are dying. I don’t think this is a result of cable news. I think it is a result of newspapers imitating cable news. If local journalists are smart, they will relearn the ethical lessons that made them thrive. In so doing, they could also become a unifying force in our communities, rather than creating further division.

Memorial Day Can Still Unite Us

Memorial Day, unlike Veterans Day, is not about military service in general, but about those who died in battle. Next Monday, as Evanston observes the day, it will be the 150th anniversary of this national tradition.

In 1868, General John Logan, commander-in-chief of a veterans’ organization for Civil War soldiers, called for an annual “Decoration Day” to adorn the graves of Union soldiers with flowers. This proclamation regularized a practice that began in the early days of the Civil War and had become widespread after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865.

Early decoration days were centered on cemeteries filled with more than 600,000 Union and Confederate soldiers who had fallen on battlefields, mostly in the South. The two most noted were at Gettysburg, Pa. and Arlington, Va.

Initially, decoration days in the South focused on Confederate graves, while those in the North decorated Union graves. But there were always those in both North and South that decorated the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers alike. These respectful observances helped knit together a bitterly divided nation.

By the fiftieth anniversary of the Civil War’s bloodiest battle, July 1913, veterans of both North and South gathered at Gettysburg for a four-day observance called “Blue-Gray Reunion.” There, among parades and re-enactments, Woodrow Wilson, the first southern president since the Civil War, delivered a speech. Thus southern and northern versions of Decoration Day were unified into a single national holiday celebrated annually on May 30.

After World War II the name, “Decoration Day” gradually gave way to “Memorial Day.” As this name became official, Congress marked the 100th anniversary of Memorial Day by moving it from May 30 to the last Monday in May. This was intended to make a convenient three-day weekend. Its unintended consequence was to undermine the very meaning of the day, according to the V.F.W.

As we approach the 150th anniversary, let us in Uinta County respectfully prove the V.F.W. wrong and take time to observe the true meaning of the day. For myself, I want to begin by offering some reflections here.

I am moved, first of all, to learn that Memorial Day is most directly associated with the aftermath of the Civil War. More than 600,000 sons and fathers out of a population of more than 31 million were killed in that war. That is proportionally equivalent to the loss of 6 million men in today’s population.

Imagine the devastation and resentment that the two sides of our own culture wars would feel if one out of every fifty people that you know were killed by a fellow American. Imagine the number of widows and orphans, grieving parents and decimated communities.

Considering this monumental rift, it is an absolute miracle that America was ever unified again. But it was. The peace and tranquility of Norman Rockwell’s America came after the horrors of the Civil War. This gives me great hope that America, divided as we seem to be, is not beyond repair and unity.

The reunification of America following the Civil War was tied to Memorial Day and the joint remembrance of both Confederate and Union soldiers. Those who honored the humanity of both sides, saw the truth and led the way to unity.

So also in our day, the acrimony and divisions seen on cable TV and social media are tied to stubborn refusals to acknowledge the humanity – and thus the universal human rights – of all people. It was a sad irony that southern states were fighting for the right to ignore the rights of others. It is our own sad irony that the same thing is going on today. The language of “rights” is regularly used to take away “the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Many people in the South were of noble intent. They had legitimate concerns and disagreements about how best to bring slavery to an end without devastating the economy or destroying states rights. But, in the face of all these concerns, there remained one fixed star. The humanity of the slaves must no longer be denied.

So also today, there are a great many disagreements about how best to love and care for all people and how to guard their rights without taking away rights from others. People of good will and noble character can and must engage in thoughtful conversation about all of this.

But at the center of all conversation, there must remain one fixed star. The humanity of the unborn must no longer be denied. Our own unity as a nation will either rise or fall in direct proportion to our ability to recognize the humanity of our own fellow countrymen. This “self-evident” truth must become self-evident again.

As the nation began to heal after the Civil War, Memorial Day became less internally focused and more about soldiers killed on foreign battlefields like Normandy and Iwo Jima, Korea and Viet Nam, Afghanistan and Iraq. In all these places, and many more, Blue and Gray fought side by side. But they fought for the same reason.

They fought to uphold the fixed star that all human beings have intrinsic value. They fought against the dehumanizing values of the Nazis, the Communists and Militant Islam. It is true that these wars were fought to protect American interests, but in most cases, American interests coincided with the defense of a principle, that all men are created equal.

It is also true that, as a Nation, we still fight our own demons. Dehumanizing people based on race, creed, age, ideology and any number of invidious reasons is a constant temptation. We also have had vigorous disagreements about when military action to stand for those dehumanized is warranted and when not. We did nothing in the face of the Communist and Rwandan genocides, but intervened in Germany and Viet Nam.

But on Memorial Day we set aside these arguments about particulars and focus on the underlying principle. The underlying principle, enshrined in the Declaration of Liberty and the U.S. Constitution, declares that all men are created equal. God has made us. All human worth and dignity comes from that natural fact.

Memorial Day remembers individual human beings who answered the call of duty and reported to the front lines. They put their lives in jeopardy and made the ultimate sacrifice in defense of this truth. They died on battlefields, foreign and domestic, to defend people they would never meet – Germans, Koreans, Vietnamese and Iraqis – people who were their contemporaries and people yet unborn.

We honor their sacrifice by honoring the people for whom they died. We remember their principle by recognizing the humanity of all our neighbors. That is the heritage they bequeathed to us by their sacrifice.

Next Monday, let us take time to gather as a community and meet those who knew these patriots on the battlefield. The Veterans Board is hosting a Bar-B-Que at the Beeman-Cashin Building from 11:00am until 2:00pm. For $5.00 you can get a lunch and mingle with some of Evanston’s own heroes.

The 150th anniversary of Memorial Day is an excellent time to remove our hats in reverence and thanksgiving. It’s a time to thank God not only for the people around us, but also for preserving among us that one principle that unites us all: One nation under God.

Answer the Question, Don't Shut Down Debate

Terry Snyder, Riverton High School Superintendent

Recently (April 25, 2018), a ten-minute interview on Riverton’s local radio station created a dust-up across the state. So far, Wyoming’s liberal news site, WyoFile, has written three articles about it. The Casper Star Tribune has published three; and numerous other outlets around the state have weighed in. Two weeks after the interview, new articles just appeared yesterday and today, May 10-11.

Not only is the conversation ongoing, it is yet another one-sided lambasting of every Wyomingite who cares about what our children are being taught and how they are being encouraged. Like most of you, I wish we weren’t constantly talking about these things in public.

Families are wearied of headlines saturated with salacious details that they would prefer be shielded from the eyes and ears of their young. We would much prefer to talk about heroism, bravery, courage, great feats of human endeavor, poetry, love and God.

But we are daily faced with a terrible dilemma. Either enter into the public discussion of sexual matters that is better talked about by parents in the home, or let the public conversation be dominated by only one point of view. I am reluctant to wade into the mire, but there are some things that need to be said.

The controversy started with two paintings on the walls of Riverton High School. Photographs were shared with the school board of the rainbow flag artwork declaring “Love is Love,” and a black heart dripping hate standing opposed to a red heart emblazoned with “LGBT.” (Reportedly, these have since been painted over.)

When John Birbari, a Riverton radio host, was interviewing the superintendent of the High School, Terry Snyder, he asked whether it is appropriate for a high school to be promoting homosexuality. Snyder responded by talking about tolerance and acceptance, but he did not answer the question that was posed.

Birbari restated the question asking if it is wise to encourage a lifestyle so strongly correlated with an increased rate of disease and suicide. Again, Snyder side-stepped the question. Instead, he said, “as you know, we can’t discriminate against those classes. That’s a personal opinion that you have there…”

There are two things that are striking about this response. First, notice how Snyder characterizes facts reported by the CDC and every other reputable study as, “personal opinion.” An educator should know better.

Also, the authors of the articles taking Birbari to task and praising Snyder should know better. They all admit that Birbari is stating a fact, not a personal opinion. For instance, WyoFile reported, “The Center for Disease Control reports increased health risks for members of the LGBTQ community,” (Former GOP leader and radio host suspended for homophobic rant, May 3, 2018).



Andrew Graham, WyoFile

However, after reporting it, most of the slanted articles inserted an opinion. Here’s how that same article in WyoFile sought to explain away the fact, “Those risks are driven by ‘stigma and discrimination’ in addition to sexual behavior.” This is certainly an oft-repeated opinion, but there are no data to back it up.

In 1994 the US Department of Health and Human Services looked at the issue and concluded, “…that while factors such as social stigma and discrimination are widely believed to place homosexual men at higher risk for developing substance abuse and other difficulties, existing research fails to document this belief.” (National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuals). In the decades since, research has still not confirmed it.

We should also note the words, “…in addition to sexual behavior.” These admit that behavior does indeed have something to do with the increased health risks. Stigma and discrimination are only suggested as factors that might explain a higher incidence of substance abuse and suicide.

Nobody has ever suggested that they explain the significantly higher rates of STDs, AIDS/HIV, intimate partner violence, experience of infidelity and other mental and physical health risks associated with risky sexual behaviors. In fact, the risks of these behaviors have absolutely nothing to do with the “sexual orientation” of the person at all. They would all be just as unhealthy when shared between people of the same sex as people of different sexes.

We live in a world that especially educates our children to avoid health risks of all sorts; and we prohibit all sorts of encouragement to unhealthy behavior. It is illegal to post cigarette advertisements on school grounds, or even to use a cartoon character that might appeal to the young. No school would ever allow a sign on school property that encouraged the consumption of alcohol.

On the contrary, we have ads reminding high school students to wash hands, don’t use drugs, don’t text while driving, look both ways when crossing the street, eat well, get plenty of sleep, and a thousand other encouragements to engage in healthy activities. There are even schools that forbid the sale of junk food and soda pop.

So why is it that when it comes to unhealthy sexual behaviors, discouragement and education are demonized? Wouldn’t all people of every sexual orientation benefit from these? Isn’t it the very definition of discrimination to withhold education from certain classes of people for ideological reasons?

It has become fashionable to shut down honest discussion of issues and behaviors by changing the subject to people and identities. That is the second part of Snyder’s response that is noteworthy.

Birbari asks about behaviors with no reference to classes of people. But the superintendent speaks only of classes of people, with no reference to behaviors, saying, “We can’t discriminate against those classes of people.”

This disconnect epitomizes the state of today’s conversation. It is as if everyone who expressed concern about the health risks of smoking were shouted down as one who wanted to kill smokers. In fact, just the opposite is true. Again, it is as though a doctor were telling his patient that over-eating can lead to heart disease and his license were revoked for allegedly hating fat people. That would be utterly ridiculous.

But that is exactly what Snyder did to Birbari. Is it possible that a highly trained educator was unable to tell the difference between a question of behavior and a question of identity? I doubt it. Educated people know quite well when they are changing the subject.

Mr. Snyder, please answer the question. Don’t bow to those forces that would stifle the discussion. The Riverton High School deserves better. The students who are being led and encouraged deserve educators with the courage to discern between healthy behavior and unhealthy. The people of Wyoming deserve better. Let’s respect all people—even those who ask unpopular questions.

Policies, Police and Politics at the University of Wyoming

Last Saturday (April 21, 2018), the Wyoming Republican Party held its biennial state convention in Laramie. To date, nothing of what they did has been covered by the press. Rather, what happened before the gavel has dominated the headlines.

University of Wyoming police chief, Mike Samp, asked Uinta County resident, Lyle Williams, to disarm. When he declined and pointed to the state law that permitted him to carry (Wyoming Statute 6-8-401), the officer issued a citation for criminal trespass on private property.

Of course, this is not about an exchange between a solitary officer and a solitary non-credentialed observer. There had been both meetings between Republican Party leadership and university leadership as well as meetings between university leaders and law enforcement. When Samp went to the convention hall in search of someone to cite, he was apparently carrying out the direct orders of university president, Laurie Nichols. The Laramie Police Department was conspicuously absent.

Lyle Williams

Williams wasn’t a lone-wolf either. Dozens of attendees were openly carrying firearms, many of whom were standing with Williams while the citation was written. In fact, numerous eyewitnesses have told me that they were literally lined up before the officer with drivers’ licenses in hand, asking to receive citations of their own. They were denied their own citations because Samp judged that only one was necessary to bring the matter before the court.

Why were so many women and men openly carrying firearms on the university campus? There are several reasons. Most of these women and men exercise their right to bear arms every day, as a matter of course. I sat with Mr. Williams at the last convention and observed that he was carrying then as well. So, it was nothing new that he should be carrying a gun.

Wyoming GOP convention delegates

But it was unusual that so many were carrying their weapons in plain sight. It would be incorrect to think that this was sheer provocation, just to be obnoxious. The reason they were carrying openly was actually a concession to state law. Wyoming Statute 6-8-104(t)(vi) prohibits conceal carry permit holders from concealing a firearm on school property.

A second reason many were carrying firearms is due to the statistical threat posed by gun-free zones. A disproportionate number of school shootings occur where school policies prohibit firearms.

A third reason that many were carrying was to challenge UW Regulation 2-178 concerning the use of buildings and grounds. This regulation prohibits the possession of “any firearm, ammunition, explosive, paintball gun, airsoft gun, taser or other electronic restraint device, sling-shot, mace or pepper spray container in excess of 1 ounce, knife (blades 3” or longer except in the apartments or for cooking purposes only), precursor for explosives, brass knuckles, blowgun, dart gun, bow, arrow, and martial-arts weapons such as a star, sword, nunchuck, club, etc..”

These prohibitions seem to run afoul of Wyoming Statute 6-8-401(c). “[N]o city, town, county, political subdivision or any other entity shall authorize, regulate or prohibit…carrying or possession of firearms, weapons, accessories, components or ammunition except as specifically provided by this chapter.” The University of Wyoming, as an entity of the state, would not have jurisdiction to make firearms laws more restrictive than the state's laws.

UW Police Chief, Mike Samp

I wondered if the University administration considered itself an entity of the state, subject to this law. When I tried to talk to Chief Samp, his office directed me to University Spokesperson, Chad Baldwin (a former editor of the Uinta County Herald). He told me that the University of Wyoming is a “unit of state government,” and that they are the owners of the property where Williams was cited for trespassing.

All of this could have been avoided. The first cause of the clash was the Republican committee that decided to hold the convention on the UW campus. They failed to consider that many delegates carried personal firearms on a daily basis. By locating the convention in a gun-free zone, the party put its delegates in a position where they would be asked to disarm.

That problem has been addressed. Among the items of business passed at the convention, was a resolution prohibiting future conventions from being located in gun-free zones.

Of course, if the delegates had meekly followed the UW disarmament regulation, the conflict could also have been avoided. But the university administration also had a way to head off the problem. The delegates applied for a temporary waiver which could be granted under UW Regulation 2-178. If the University had granted their request, the whole matter would have been avoided.

UW President, Nichols

The fact that President Nichols refused to grant these prior requests for a two-day waiver, means that the administration was spoiling for a fight long before Mr. Williams came to town. It takes two to tango, and the university was a willing participant in this dance.

Why? I have outlined the reasons why dozens of delegates were openly carrying and willing to risk a citation to challenge the policy. Why was the university administration just as obviously willing to spend time and money to defend it?

I am not quite sure, but I will venture a guess. Looking at the policy itself, I am at a loss to understand its list of prohibited items. Remember, it’s not just about guns. It is about a long list of implements—from kitchen knives to nunchucks, from bear spray to blowguns. How a loose bullet in my pocket is a threat to anyone, or how a plastic pellet shot by a spring-loaded pistol could be a more dangerous weapon than a three-inch knife baffles me.

But let’s set that aside for the moment and focus only on the gun. That, after all, is the issue of the day. In fact, it’s not even the gun itself that is the issue. University policy makes it plain that guns are indeed allowed on campus, but only when carried by police and military.

“The Wyoming legislature,” on the other hand, “finds that the right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental right … [and] affirms this right as a constitutionally protected right in every part of Wyoming.” (W.S. 6-8-401(a)) This is the statute that the UW administration wishes to overrule in its own part of Wyoming.

The university administration is engaging a fight to assert that when it comes to the Second  Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, it can make laws independent of the state legislature that funds it. Not only that, as an entity of the state of Wyoming, it seems in open defiance of Wyoming Statute 6-8-401 altogether.

A week ago Friday two men smiled cordially and exchanged handshakes as one gave a ticket to the other in front of the UW conference center. Behind these two men, and unseen to the naked eye, was a deliberately sought conflict between the University of Wyoming and Wyoming’s elected representatives.

Wyoming Remembers the Armenian Genocide

On this day (April 24) in 1915, the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey) arrested about 250 Armenian leaders in the capital city of Constantinople. They were transported 300 miles east to a prison where hundreds more joined them. Then they were executed without trial.

This event is remembered as the start of the Armenian Genocide, which murdered an estimated 1.5 million Armenians from 1915 to 1923. That’s a full quarter of the entire Nazi Holocaust! Have you ever been told the story?

Armenia became a kingdom in the fourth century BC. Armenians live in the Armenian Highlands near Mt. Ararat, the final resting place of the biblical ark. Through the Christian apostle, St. Bartholomew, the Armenians became the first kingdom in the world to adopt Christianity as its religion.

Through more than 18 centuries, they held together as an ethno-religious group living under various occupying governments. Beginning in 1555, a series of treaties allowed the Armenians to be a semi-autonomous state within the Muslim Ottoman Empire.

A new era came about in 1908 when the Committee of Union and Progress (the “Young Turks”) staged a coup d’etat. Many Armenians thought that this would bring them full independence as a nation. The Young Turks had other plans.

As various territories of the former Ottoman Empire were gaining their independence from what we now call Turkey, the Young Turks decided that the only way to keep the inner provinces from breaking away would be to neutralize the significant Armenian Christian populations found there.

Three of the highest officials in the Turkish government placed other Young Turks in various positions of power while also creating a Special Organization comprised of criminals and irregular troops to carry out the mass deportation and murder of Armenians in the interior provinces.

When World War I broke out in August 1914, they began to execute this plan. Within three weeks, all Armenian males between the ages of 20 and 45 were conscripted into the army and taken away from their homes and families. A week later 56,000 Turkish troops were garrisoned in Christian schools and churches in the Sivas province.

By late September Armenian populations were given orders to turn in all weapons from firearms to kitchen knives. Three days later, the same government began distributing weapons to Muslim residents, claiming that the Armenians were unreliable.

Meanwhile communications were systematically shut down. The telegraph system was censored, and foreign postal service was ended. Disarmed, decapitated of political and family leadership, surrounded, and cut off from the outside world, the Armenians were as vulnerable as any people could be.

Then began the slaughter.

Bands of chetes began looting, violating women and children and murdering Armenians in the interior provinces of Turkey. Days after news reached the Armenian leaders in the capitol, Constantinople, a proclamation of jihad was issued which legalized the chete organizations and was sent out to all the provinces of the Empire.

Mass public executions of Armenian soldiers, who had been conscripted into the army only three months earlier, further terrorized the Armenian population. Over the next several months Armenians who had been deferred in the first draft were conscripted nonetheless. By March of 1915 those Armenians serving in the army were stripped of their weapons and uniforms.

Orders were sent from Constantinople to expel Armenians from any government posts—elected or appointed. The remaining Christian schools and churches were requisitioned as barracks for the Turkish army. The homes of many Armenians, together with horses, carts and other travel equipment were also seized by the army.

All of this happened prior to the official beginning of the genocide. The arrest and execution of Armenian politicians and intellectuals in Constantinople unleashed the slaughter on a massive scale. As a rule, community leaders were arrested and executed. Then, the remaining population was rounded up and forced to march into the Syrian desert.

They were told that camps with food and water awaited them at the end of the march. Most died of starvation and dehydration on the way and those who survived were slaughtered on arrival. All these atrocities continued throughout the years of World War I. While most of the world was focused on the fighting in Europe, the most ancient Christian people in the world was being systematically exterminated.

When the war ended, there was a brief respite. But, in 1920 the atrocities recommenced and continued at least until 1923. Some say they are still ongoing to this day.

Historians and academic institutions that study genocide have come to a consensus that the systematic massacres and deportations of Armenians from the Ottoman Empire formally constitute the 20th century’s first genocide. The United States has joined 28 other countries in recognizing and denouncing the genocide, although the current and past three administrations have refrained from using the term “genocide” to avoid offending Turkey.

Despite this consensus, and the multitude of eyewitness survivors, photographs and other documentation, Turkey and Azerbaijan flatly deny the historical factuality of the Armenian Genocide. Germany’s total surrender at the close of World War II gave Allied forces access to the extermination camps and records documenting the Jewish Holocaust. But the Turkish government, for more than a century, has been allowed to thwart any independent, international investigation of the Armenian Genocide.

Ongoing refusal by Turkey and Azerbaijan to acknowledge and denounce this evil, together with the dogged resistance of numerous other nations, remain a blight on the human rights record of the United Nations. Although the 1985 Whitaker Report formally detailed how these events fit the UN definition of genocide, no action has been taken.

As the first genocide of the 20th century, the Armenian Genocide set a precedent that would soon be followed on an even larger scale by the Nazi regime. A week before invading Poland, Adolph Hitler reportedly told his commanders, “I have given the order—and will have everyone shot who utters but one word of criticism—that the aim of this war does not consist in reaching certain geographical lines, but in the enemies' physical elimination. Thus, for the time being only in the east, I put ready my Death's Head units, with the order to kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of the Polish race or language. Only thus will we gain the living space that we need. Who still talks nowadays of the extermination of the Armenians?” Who, indeed, speaks of it?

I discovered, in researching this column, that Wyoming is still talking about the Armenian Genocide. On April 21, 2017 Governor Matt Mead made Wyoming the 45th state to recognize it. In a letter to the Armenian National Committee of America, he wrote, “The atrocities of both the Armenian and Jewish Holocausts were unimaginable, but it is important for all to remember – history must not repeat itself.” State Senator Anthony Bouchard, a leading voice behind recognizing the genocide, reminded Wyomingites that Azerbaijan and Turkey continue their genocidal policies against the Armenian homeland, as seen during the April 2016 beheading and mutilation of Armenians in Artsakh by Azerbaijan’s forces.

This history was never taught to me in any of my formal schooling. For this reason, on this 103rd anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, I simply wanted to tell the story and keep its memory alive. My hope is that our school teachers—from elementary to junior college—will take this occasion to teach their own students this important history, as they do already concerning the Jewish holocaust.

Consent, Taboo and #MeToo

Last week Sean Westin was acquitted on charges of sexual assault. The embarrassing details of the case were splayed across the pages of the Uinta County Herald. Sean, a body builder who worked as a personal trainer used his position to solicit sexual favors from a client.

At issue in the trial was whether her consent was freely granted. The woman’s traumatic brain injury as a child, her huge disadvantage in physical strength and the threat of monetary loss all combined to raise the question of whether she was capable of free consent.

In another case, a federal judge in Casper awarded Amanda Dykes $221,000 in back pay, ruling that she had no choice but to resign from her job in the Wyoming Military Department. In this case, there was no sexual activity and no consent. Nor was there threatening conduct, verbal abuse, or obscene language.


Rather, her supervisors failed to protect her from the unwanted advances of Don Smith, the director of the Youth Challenge Program at Camp Guernsey. He was apparently dissatisfied with his own marriage and took to email, written notes, and personal visits to Amanda’s work space to attempt an extramarital affair.

U.S. District Court Judge Scott Skavdahl ruled that Smith’s persistent advances after Dykes had rejected them created a hostile work environment. In a stinging letter he rebuked the Wyoming Military Department saying, “[they] should be embarrassed by the multiple failures” of Dykes’ supervisors to address her complaints effectively.

Meanwhile, at Utah State University in Logan, the piano program has been rocked by allegations of sexual discrimination, harassment, and assault. On April 6, 2018 the investigative agency, Snell & Wilmer, released a report of its investigation into abuses alleged on social media in mid-February.

Professor Gary Amano, long-time Director of the USU piano program and world-renowned piano teacher has retired in its wake. To be clear, he is alleged to have discriminated, but not to have harassed or assaulted anyone himself. He remains well-respected piano professional. The question is whether he and other supervisors did enough to address complaints of harassment and assault by others in the department.

USU Press Conference

The perpetrators of the harassment and assault appear to be three former, and one present members of the piano faculty (their names were not released). Over the course of two decades, there were both allegations and admissions of inappropriate sexual relations between students and faculty. The investigators have concluded that these were known to the heads of the program but were not adequately addressed.

Both those engaged in student sexual affairs and those supervisors faulted for lacking supervision and discipline defended themselves by asserting that the sexual contact was consensual.

There’s that word, again. All three cases—and a jillion more—hinge on the question of consent. Inappropriate professor-student relationships, inappropriate extramarital relationships, inappropriate trainer-client relationships are all justified by the nebulous claim of consent.

All three of these cases sicken me.

Let’s be perfectly clear. None of these things should have been done. Women and men were seriously hurt, with lasting effect. They were hurt psychologically, physically and spiritually. Budding careers were derailed, academic progress impeded. People who placed themselves and their children in the care of others were betrayed by institutions and persons who should have been safe and nurturing.

What has gone so wrong with our world that so many people in so many walks of life are being hurt in such terrible ways? What should we be doing to reduce these harms? These are the question with which we should be wrestling.

The answers are not simplistic. We should start with the admission that such evils have always been perpetrated among human beings. But while admitting this, we should also notice that far more people are being hurt today than in previous generations.

These two admissions both agree on one thing. Human sexuality is entirely different than animal sexuality. There is not a single case of long-term psychological or emotional damage caused by disordered sexuality among dogs, cats, or laboratory mice. Nor are there any sexual predators in the animal world. Those are only found among humans acting inhumanely.

Societies that understand the deep, spiritual meaning of human sexuality have worked together to guard and protect one another from abuses that arise when sexuality is downgraded to mere animal instincts. As our own society has abandoned these basic truths, we have seen untold damage to families and to individuals—both men and women, both children and adults.

The first step to recovering sexual sanity is to be clear on this point. In the animal world, desire and consent are all that matters. Not so among humans. For us, there are some things that should never be desired and should never receive consent. These are taboo.

Many of these are still recognized in law. Incest, bestiality and pederasty are among them, so also statutory rape. No amount of consent, by any definition, can make such things right.

Related to these are policies in the work place and in schools that protect people from unwanted advances. School is an extension of the home. It is the place where parental guidance and instruction are carried out on behalf of parents. That is the fundamental reason why every school has policies prohibiting the sexualization of the teacher-student relationship.

This taboo was downplayed and ignored on the USU campus and many people were hurt as a result. Parents who felt betrayed by inappropriate faculty relations with their children were completely in the right. Age has nothing to do with it. The nature of the relationship was at stake.

Part of this taboo involves a power differential. Professors have such enormous power over the future of their students that special care must be taken to protect the student from the abuse of this power. That means questions of sexual consent should not even be possible.

The same goes for monetary pressure and work relationships. That’s why prostitution is not treated as private consent, but as a public harm. If we can’t understand this in the abstract, the current explosion of human trafficking should help us see the light.

Then, there are marriage promises made before a judge. Why should a judge be involved in hearing the promise, “til death us do part,” if he doesn’t care whether or not the promise is kept? Quite apart from whether Mr. Smith was being inappropriately persistent in his amorous pursuit of Ms. Dykes, somebody should have taken him to the woodshed for violating his marriage vows.

One of the problems that we face today is the disintegration of public morals that are meant to safeguard people from sexual abuses that the law is incapable of stopping. These taboos are not mere holdovers from an unenlightened past. They represent the wisdom of generations that were far-and-way more enlightened than ours.

It’s time to stop attacking taboos in favor of the unfettered pursuit of every desire and the absolute freedom to consent to anything at all. It’s time to reconsider how we might protect one another from a view of human sexuality that never rises above the animal instincts.

Science, Accountabilty, and the EPA

The Environmental Protection Agency was created 47 years ago. It is not mentioned in the Constitution of the United States, nor does it owe its existence to an act of congress. Its genesis, rather, is an executive order signed by President Richard Nixon on December 2, 1970.

It was created in response to the National Environmental Policy Act, and intended as an umbrella agency to “permit coordinated and effective government action on behalf of the environment.” Since that initial legislation, congress has enacted dozens of other environmental laws that are administered by the EPA, which has an annual budget of more than $8 billion.

Like every other governmental agency, once created it took on a life of its own. Its chief administrative officer and a few secondary officers may be appointed by the president, but the other 15,000 employees are unaccountable bureaucrats.

I realize that the term “unaccountable bureaucrats” has a pejorative ring to it. I assure you that it is not intended as an insult, merely an accurate description. A bureaucrat is simply a person who rules (crat) in a bureau (an agency). Anybody who makes and enforces rules fits that description. “Unaccountable” simply means that a person is given a certain amount of discretion to do so.

Over the years many unaccountable bureaucrats have sullied the term by abusing their discretion. But many others have served faithfully and well by holding themselves accountable to a higher standard. That’s just the nature of the beast.

Good government is always a balancing game between allowing the freedom to unleash human ingenuity, on the one hand, and providing reasonable and enforceable boundaries on the other hand. This is true both for an administrator’s judgments over bureaucrats, and for the rule of those bureaucrats over ordinary citizens.

The chief administrative officer is charged with balancing these competing concerns. In doing so, he or she will always be criticized by many in the bureaucracy for not giving them enough discretion, power, or money. That’s no surprise. But limits on the bureaucrats allow human ingenuity to flourish in the private sector.

That’s the battle unfolding in the EPA right now. Administrator Scott Pruitt has been on the job for a year and has become the focus of a lot of negative press lately. His critics are bureaucrats and their sympathizers in the progressive press. None of them is happy with the accountability measures he is putting in place at the EPA.

Last October I wrote in these pages about how Pruitt put an end to the underhanded practice of “Sue and Settle,” which bypassed the congressionally mandated regulatory process. Agency insiders would instruct radical environmentalists when and how to sue the agency. Then, they would settle out of court and have a judge rubber-stamp a new rule without having to go through the careful public process.

Putting an end to that practice did not make Pruitt popular among career bureaucrats,  but it was most certainly faithful to his oath of office and his mission as the chief administrator of the EPA.

About the time I was writing about “Sue and Settle,” Pruitt changed another long-time practice at the EPA, one that virtually guaranteed skewed science. The agency uses part of it’s $8 billion budget to award research grants. This is intended to pay scientists to compile and analyze data so that the agency can make environmental decisions with the best objective knowledge base.

It looks good on paper, but there are hidden pitfalls. When the government has billions of dollars to spend, and a scientist needs only a few thousand to put bread on the table, it creates a gigantic power differential that is open to abuse.

Bureaucrats can funnel research grants to scientists who support their agenda and withhold money from those who don’t. When this happens consistently enough, word gets out in the scientific community and pressures everyone to toe the line.

Government-awarded research grants can make the difference between keeping a program afloat and needing to find a new job. You can imagine how strongly that can influence research outcomes. I make no particular accusations here; you can research the subject yourself. I am only pointing out that among mere mortals, the incentive to skew science is strong.

Pruitt has not directly addressed this problem. Instead, he addressed a related practice that made the problem even worse. Breaking its own ethical standards, the EPA has been appointing these same scientists to its own advisory boards.

This creates a situation of inbreeding. Not only can the EPA put its huge thumb on the scale to affect research, it could also amplify that skewed research by giving those scientists direct influence over the policymakers.

Last fall, Pruitt ended this over-the-top abuse. Now, scientists simply have to choose one or the other. They can either serve on EPA advisory boards without EPA money given to their research programs, or they can receive EPA research grants and step down from the boards. They can’t do both. While this doesn’t end all temptation to skew science, it does moderate it greatly.

In late March, Pruitt announced another improvement in EPA accountability; the EPA will ban the use of “secret science.” This sounds like a no-brainer. After all, the very word “science” means knowing. How can you have knowledge that is unknown (secret)?

One of the fundamental rules of science is that research should be objective and repeatable by any other scientist. This is the whole idea of “peer review.” If your own scientific colleagues cannot verify your research, it is worthless science.

But for years the EPA has been making and enforcing rules on the basis of “scientific studies” that it refuses to release to the public. For decades, expensive air quality regulations have been promulgated, based on tax-payer funded studies conducted by Harvard and BYU. But when an EPA advisory panel asked to review the studies, it was denied.

Later, congress also asked for access to the studies. It too was refused. So, in 1998 it  passed a law requiring that scientific data used by the EPA to make rules be released to the public. But, a federal judge threw out that law. In 2013 it subpoenaed the information. The EPA still refused.

Finally, the House of Representatives passed three separate bills to stop the EPA from making regulations based on “science” that is unavailable to the public. None of these became law. So, after the EPA sandbagged the American public for a quarter of a century, Pruitt finally corrected the situation himself.

He signed a directive that the EPA cannot make any rules based on science that it is unwilling to release to the public. The era of “secret science” is over, at least for now.

There are more good things happening at the EPA besides these. But just knowing about these three changes ought to assure the reader that improvement in government can and does happen from time to time. Kudos to Scott Pruitt for his work at the EPA.