OPINION Wednesday, March 16,201 I AN AN OPINIO-N Gingrich's 'passion' makes headlines nationalization is a rare talent, yet one that seems to be eas- ily developed even efined and perfected by those in public life. Take the case of former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. The Georgia Republican who craft- ed Congress' "Contract with America" will likely be among the crowd seeking favor in the 2012 presidential primaries. To make his case for the nation's top job, Gingrich, who is married to his third wife, has to mend a few fences smashed dur- ing his Washington days, espe- cially with the religious right Now there's nothing in the law against multiple marriages, if thafs your fancy unless some of the unions overlap. Gingrich's didn't But the relationships that led to marriage? Those did, and rather scandalously. Gingrich married his high school sweetheart, Jackie, after graduation. It wasn't a traditional high school romance in that she wasn't a classmate. She was seven years his senior and his geometry teacher. Fast-forward to the day Jackie was served with the "terms of their divorce." She was in the hos- pital recovering from surgery for cervical cancer. A few months later, he mar- ried his second wife, Marianne, a congressional assistant with whom he admitted having an affair during his first marriage. He's now married to his third wife, Callista with whom he acknowledges he had an affair in the mid-1990s, while he was mar- ried to Marianne. And here's where the rational- ization expertise comes into play. Gingrich said in a recent inter- view that it wasn't his fault It was his "passion for his country" that led to his. behavior. "There's no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropri- ate," Gingrich told the Christian Broadcasting Network. U Scripps Howard News Service Lake City Reporter Serving Columbia County Since 1874, TheiLake City Reporter is pub- lished with pride for residents of Columbia and surrounding counties by Community Newspapers Inc. We believe strong newspapers build strong communities -"Newspapers get things done!" . .Our primary goal is to publish distinguished and profitable community-oriented newspapers. This mission will be accomplished through the teamwork of professionals dedicated to truth, integrity and hard work. Todd Wilson, publisher Sue Brannon, controller Dink NeSmith, president Tom Wood, chairman LETTERS POLICY Letters to the Editor should be typed or neatly written and double spaced. Letters should not exceed 400 words and will be edited for length and libel. Letters must be signed and include the writer's name, address and telephone number for verification. Writers can have two letters per month published. Letters and guest columns are the opinion of the writers and not necessarily that of the Lake City Reporter. BY MAIL: Letters, P.O. Box 1709, Lake City, FL 32056; or drop off at 180 E. Duval St. downtown. BY FAX: (386) 752-9400. BY E-MAIL: news@lakecityreporter.com www.lakecityreporter.com Birthday is time for reflection occurs this week. Which one, precisely, isn't important, except tp say that while my best years may yet be ahead of me, they certainly will be far fewer than those that have already passed. Which is fine. But it makes one think about when and where one happened to be born, the cosmic slot assigned to each of us by fate, luck, God's will - and how our few years'on earth mesh with civilization's ongoing, careless advance. Billions of people have lived. during humanity's hardscrabble epoch on the earth, but nearly all of them died in the same world, more or less, in which they were born. My generation may be only the second or third to experience lifetimes of technological and social change so rapid that it has the capacity to transform the world into unrecognizability over the course of a few decades. My mother's life is a good example: When she was born near the end of 1912, her household included an aged aunt whose arms were still. weakened by the effects of two arrows that struck her during an Indian attack early in her life on the Texas frontier. Women couldn't vote in 1912, and neither could many blacks. My mother distinctly remembered seeing her first automobile and rushing into the'yard with my grandmother to gawk in amazement at a primitive aircraft overhead. John Crisp jcrisp@delmaredu By the time she died a few years ago, a black man and a woman were vying for the presidency. She had travelled the world by jet aircraft, and men had landed on;.the'moon. , And these momentous events hardly begin to describe the differences between the present world and the world of 1912. The world I was born in has changed as much as my mother's did during her long life perhaps even more. But I was luckier than she was. so far my life hasn't included a Great Depression or the privations of a World War II. In fact, I know enough about the history of civilization to recognize that I was extremely : ,lucky to be born when and where I was. Timing is everything: My mother's younger brother came down with paralytic polio when he was 12. When I was born the threat of polio was an anxiety that besieged every parent's spirit. But by the time I was in first grade, the Salk vaccine, was being administered for the first time in schools, saving thousands from this dreaded disease. Perhaps I was one of them. In many other ways, the prosperous 1950s were a good time for a white male to grow up in America. Life wasn't so grand for many black Americans and for women, but their conditions were only background noise for a world of opportunity for white males. The demands of blacks , and women to share more of the American birthright served as a great chastening that undercut some of the false idealism of the '50s. So did the assassination of John F Kennedy. So did Vietnam and Watergate. The nation learned a lot and became an even better place to live. As I grew up, good educational opportunities were available. Eventually, so were jobs. Gasoline'seemed cheap, and in endless supply. No one worried about global. warming. My parents got old and enjoyed a comfortable retirement based on pensions developed during lifetimes of middle-class labor, supplemented by Social Security and Medicare. I'll probably be able to do the same. I'm grateful for that But I'm uneasy about what the world has become during my lucky lifespan. Maybe the aging always felt this way. But this time civilization is rapidly bumping up against real limits, of energy, of climate; of population. Action is called for, but mostly we' rely on denial, meaning that a fortunate life like mine may become more and more a thing of the past * John M. Crisp teaches in the' English Department at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi, Texas. HIGHLIGHTS IN HISTORY today is Wednesdpy, March 16, the 75th day of 2011. There are 290 days left in the year. Today's Highlight in History: On March 16, 1802, President Thomas Jefferson signed a measure authorizing the establishment of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. On this date: In 1751, James Madison,, LETTERS fourth president of the United States, was born in Port Conway, Va. In 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel "The Scarlet Letter" was first pub- lished. In 1926, rocket science pioneer Robert H. Goddard suc- cessfully tested the first liquid- fueled rocket, in Auburn, Mass. In 1968, during the Vietnam War, the My Lai (mee ly) Massacre of.Vietnamese civil- ians was carried out by U.S. Army troops; estimates of the death toll vary between 347 and 504. In 1971, former Republican presidential candidate Thomas E. Dewey, 68, died in Bal Harbour, Fla.; American actress Bebe Daniels, 70, died in London. TO THE EDITOR Not all unions good for business To the editor: Unions. Regarding Mr. Gerry Hale's letter praising unions, especially electrical unions, he may be right. However, there are a feiv big unions in this country that 'need to be reigned in. Those with collective bargaining on pay, benefits etc. The Unions killed the steel business, the auto industry and are slowly but surely killing the pocket books of all Americans. A car that cost $3,000 in 1957 now cost $63,000! Something is defi- nitely wrong with that picture! Ninety percent of the increas- es in products are due to union employees striking and demanding more money for doing the same job they have been doing for ions and then companies having to increase prices to pay their inflated wages. One main thing is paying those Democrats in DC so they can put their Nanny State people in office to further push the progressive agenda of the unions in this country. Look at their symbol balled fist same as the Socialist Progressive Workers Party! High time the grip of Socialist Unions in this country be bro- ken and we get back to being the number one manufacturer in the world and not third banana! Manuel Enos Lake City 4A Jay Ambrose. Speaktojay@ool com Give King's hearings on Islam a chance can kill, and did in the case of Nidal Hassan, an Army major whose hateful aniti-American rants seem to have been ignored because he was a Muslim and his superi- ors did not wish to appear prej- udiced. Therefore left pretty much to his own devices, he ended up the only suspect in the slaughter of 13 people at For,t Hood. It's terribly wrong, an invita- tion to mayhem, to suppose anyone's minority status, ethnic background or reli- gious creed should absolve him of suspicion and prevent .precautionary steps when his behavior is deafening ears with its warning signals. It would of course be wrong, too, to assume without evidence that some particular group's mem- bers are generally a threat. Is that what Rep. Peter King . is doing with his hearings on. Islamic radicalization? Conceivably. But despite the screeches from demonstrators,, leftist commentators and par-, tisan politicians with their own demonizing agendas, we will have to wait and see exactly what this New York congress' man and his committee do to know for sure. Meanwhile, we already know homegrown Muslim terrorists are for real. Taking a close look at their histories, trying to figure out what fostered their violent anger and seeking to deter- mine whether more are on the way could be a vital exercise in saving lives as long as care is taken not to tar. the innocent in the process. No less prestigious and responsible an organization than the Council on Foreign Relations has pointed to an "uptick in recent years" in terrorist incidents involving some 125 American Muslims.' Where there had been six cases a year since 9/11, there were 13 in 2009, and experts pronounced themselves wor- ried. These Americans seem ambitious; some are playing important roles in al Qaeda and bombing bodies abroad. They are haters, but where did the hate come from? Unless we learn something unexpected, jihadist warriors constitute a tiny portion of the American Muslim popula- tion, which the council writer puts at somewhere between 2 million and 7 million people. Here is what still strikes me as a special danger. These American radicals are already here without any difficult arrangements, they can easily and effectively go about prepa- rations for killings without : attracting much attention and they know our vulnerabilities better than, say, a terrorist from Saudi Arabia. When a.very few can com-. mit massive mayhem, small numbers of savvy terrorists can still pose big risks. I have. met experts on all of this who say easily accessible biological weapons could kill hundreds of thousands, that we have inadequateresponse plans to contain the harm and that we are still stumbling our way to doing what may be undoable: policing the possibilities. * Jay Ambrose, formerly Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard news- papers and the editor of dailies" in El Paso, Texas, and Denver, ;is a columnist living in Colorado.