Local View: Politics, not principles, driving who gets into the US

From the column: "What amazes me most is the rhetoric used to describe humans who want to come here."

By John Freivalds

Published 1/14/2023.

Duluth News Tribune

Ever wonder when the dehumanizing rhetoric of Latin-Americans migrants began? No, it wasn’t with President Donald Trump. It started in 1965 when a new system of immigration control was introduced. The old system had built-in bias against Catholics and Jews, and the Center of Immigration Studies concluded that “the new system is widely credited with having spiked a shift in the composition of immigration away from Europe (and) toward Latin America.”

Local View: Call it economics — or just mumbo jumbo about money

From the column: "Today we are surrounded by the confusing lexicon of economics ... (and) are similarly surrounded by professors and politicians who purport to understand it."

By John Freivalds

Published 12/12/2022

Duluth News Tribune

Economics is that science that describes, analyzes, and explains how people allocate scarce resources to unlimited wants. That’s what Father Zrinyi, my economics 101 prof at Georgetown University, taught me.

Is the US going bananas?

By John Freivalds

Published: TBD

Duluth News Tribune

Is the U.S. turning into a banana republic? That’s what column writer Melih Altınok wrote in the Daily Sabah. Many conservatives make the claim, too, even though few of them have lived in a third-world country.

Local View: 'Deplorables' was used prematurely

From the column: "(It also) got lots of pushback, and no one then called candidate Trump and his supporters fascists. The latter denunciation turned out to be long overdue."

By John Freivalds

Published 10/06/2022

Duluth News Tribune

“Deplorables” was the term used in a speech delivered by Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on Sept. 9, 2016, at a campaign fundraising event. She used the word to describe half the supporters of her opponent, Republican nominee Donald Trump, saying, "They're racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic." Clinton admitted in her 2017 book, “What Happened,” that using the term was one of the factors for her loss.

Local View: Unlike in football, macho mania is not the way

From the column: "We’re not immune here in Minnesota, as our state once elected a governor who was the epitome of a macho man, the wrestler Jesse “the Body” Ventura."

By John Freivalds

Published 9/8/2022

Duluth News Tribune

Football season is upon us and with it the glorification of violence and the language and culture behind it. Yet football is only a small part of the brutal macho mania that has seized Minnesota and the rest of the country with an apparent belief that brute force and violent language is what is needed to make things happen.

Just look at U.S. Sen. Lindsay Graham’s recent warnings of violence if former President Donald Trump does not get his way.

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From the column: "What amazes me most is the rhetoric used to describe humans who want to come here."

From the column: "Today we are surrounded by the confusing lexicon of economics ... (and) are similarly surrounded by professors and politicians who purport to understand it."

Local View: 'Deplorables' was used prematurely

From the column: "(It also) got lots of pushback, and no one then called candidate Trump and his supporters fascists. The latter denunciation turned out to be long overdue."

From the column: "We’re not immune here in Minnesota, as our state once elected a governor who was the epitome of a macho man, the wrestler Jesse “the Body” Ventura."