RUTHFULLY YOURS

Regarding your editorial “Battering Norman Borlaug” (April 25): Shortly after becoming the U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, I was made aware that desperate, starving people in Zambia had broken into a convoy of trucks carrying U.S.-donated sacks of food out of their country. I was dumbfounded, and found a Jesuit missionary in Zambia to speak with about this unbelievable occurrence. He said: “Yes, ambassador, that cable was correct—that food was a product of GMO (genetically modified organism) seeds, and if they allow it into Zambia the people here will want to grow it, and they would never after be able to export food to Europe.”

I couldn’t accept that food technology was being used to deny food to starving people. This led me to Dr. Borlaug. I arranged a conference and many meetings in Rome for this man to explain the wonders of new food technology and its promise to thwart the curse of starvation and malnutrition in Africa. This was in 2002 and people there were dying at the rate of 25,000 a day.

The controversy over GMO food persists today, although there is still no proof that it causes anyone ill effects. The credibility of Dr. Borlaug in Rome convinced the Holy Father to task the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on the question of GMO food. After exhaustive research, the Academy of Sciences reported to the pope that they found no harmful effects to people who ate GMO food, and that it offered great promise to end world food shortages.

One senior member of the Roman Curia, who came to know Dr. Borlaug through this experience (he came to Rome twice at my request, at his own expense), said, “This man is a saint!”

Scripture tells us that we are all sinners—even the saints. Apparently, according to PBS, Borlaug’s sin is that he saved too many lives.

May he rest in peace.

R. James Nicholson

Washington

Mr. Nicholson was ambassador to the Holy See 2001-05.

We had the pleasure of meeting Norman Borlaug and filming his receipt of the Congressional Gold Medal in 2007, which led to the production of a one-hour PBS documentary about his life and work.

Borlaug saw the famine conditions in several parts of the world as a human emergency and knew very well that his high-yield strains of wheat and accompanying farming methods were only buying time. But poor farmers all over the world were very quick to adopt his hybrid seeds and farming strategies when they saw the results, and this kind of transformation continues in Africa and many other places to this day. Before his death, Borlaug was very active in helping smallholder growers vastly improve their lives through modern seeds and growing methods. Your editorial is spot on.

Philip Courter

Crystal River, Fla.

I heard Borlaug give a speech late in his career where he addressed criticism of his work. His position was simple—he had met many, many well-meaning (and well-fed) critics over the years, but had never met any willing to starve to death for their beliefs.

Joe Bouton

Athens, Ga.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/justice-department-intervenes-against-northams-communal-worship-restrictions/The Virginia restrictions run afoul of the First Amendment.

‘There is no pandemic exception to the Constitution and its Bill of Rights.” That, yet again, was the Justice Department’s message as it intervened on Sunday on the side of a Virginia church, which is suing Governor Ralph Northam’s lockdown against communal worship.

As I related back in April (here and here), Attorney General Bill Barr has admonished states and municipalities that the Justice Department stands ready to take action against social-distancing edicts that unduly restrict fundamental constitutional rights. The DOJ’s Civil Division has been paying particular attention to restrictions on the free exercise of religion — specifically, heavy restrictions or outright bans on communal worship.

A number of governors and mayors, particularly in blue states and cities, have decreed that, in their considered opinion, religious observance is not sufficiently “essential” to be indulged while the authorities are trying to stop the spread of COVID-19, the potentially lethal infectious disease caused by the novel coronavirus. State and municipal executives are relying on their emergency powers to dictate draconian restrictions (i.e., these are not legislative enactments).

We need not speculate whether insufficient weight has been accorded the Constitution in the fashioning of various prohibitions on worship, work, and assembly. As New Jersey governor Phil Murphy smugly put it when questioned by Fox’s Tucker Carlson, the Constitution is “above my pay grade,” so “I wasn’t thinking of the Bill of Rights when we did this.” His Honor was relying on a purportedly higher authority: “scientists.”

https://canadafreepress.com/article/an-end-to-the-chaos

Tom McCaffrey is the author of Radical by Nature: The Green Assault on Liberty, Property, and
Prosperity.

Finally, someone is in control.

For too long, Americans have been free to come and go as they pleased. They could climb into their cars and drive anywhere they wanted, at any time of day, for any reason they chose, or for no reason at all. And they never had to justify themselves to anyone. It was a deplorable situation.

A fifth of the U.S. workforce has been put out of work by the new edicts

If a store was open for business, a person could just walk right in and shop to his heart’s content. If it was too crowded for his taste, he was free to go elsewhere. Or he could go about his business cheek by jowl with other customers, possibly exposing himself to all manner of illness. Worse, if he had children with him, or children at home, he risked exposing them to whatever horrible disease he might pick up at the store. Deplorable.

He could go to a Walmart, or a dentist, or a barber shop, or a restaurant, or even a church for God’s sake, and it was left entirely up to him to decide whether the risk of contracting an illness was worth whatever benefit he stood to gain. But such decisions are too important to be left to any old Tom, Dick, or Harry. It’s about time someone put a stop to all this. 

Yes, a fifth of the U.S. workforce has been put out of work by the new edicts. Tens of thousands of small businesses have been destroyed, along with their owners’ life savings. Collateral damage. It was unavoidable and well worth the price if it meant that someone would finally be put into control, that someone would finally have the authority to do what’s necessary to keep us SAFE. Because that’s all that matters in the end.