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Thomas K. Sarrouf, Jr.
Recently, The Heights published a hit-piece on Michael Yurkovskiy, a representative of the Campus Leadership Project, which is an organization that dedicates itself to helping young people get involved in their campus’ student governments. The hit-piece interviewed a number of representatives in UGBC who claim that they were approached by Yurkovskiy in an attempt to help their political aspirations within UGBC. The article’s main point, besides casting Yurkovskiy’s attempts in a negative light—and this was echoed over and over by basically every comment offered by UGBC representatives and candidates—was that partisan politics should not enter into campus politics. There are a number of problems with this whole scenario, and the fact that it is even news is absurd. For one thing, Campus Leadership Project actually agrees with that sentiment. How do I know that? I attended their Leadership Conference this past December, where they summoned hundreds of students, yes, mostly conservative, for a three-day seminar of presentations encouraging us to get involved in student government, and giving us the tools and strategies for effective campaigning, giving speeches, participating in debates, building up a ground game, forming coalitions, marketing, and getting out the votes. One of the key things that CLP emphasized was to avoid straying into partisan politics and instead focus on issues that mattered to our particular campuses. And what were those things mentioned as issues we could focus on campus? It’s a conservative organization, so it must be pretty regressive, scary stuff that’s harmful to people. Policies like increasing mental health awareness and resources on campus. Improving campus safety with blue light systems. Working on making sure that fraternities are represented, as they are often blamed by administrators for everything and have their concerns ignored (something irrelevant for our campus, but many of the other schools have fraternities, and they deserve to have their voices heard). Increasing protections and resources for survivors of sexual assault. Mind you, these are many of the same policies that are part of stump speeches of every member of BC’s own student assembly! The CLP’s Leadership Conference focused on helping people organize their campaigns and focus on strategic things that make winning an election necessary. We barely talked about issues at all; the above ones were just suggestions. They mostly asked us to identify problems at our specific campuses and build a platform off of that. So what’s the big deal? Why do UGBC people care about some random guy from some random organization trying to “influence campus politics”? Why does The Heights think that this is newsworthy enough to run a long hit piece on a good young man, and someone I consider a friend (which is why I am bothering to write this rebuttal)? For one thing, the UGBC representatives who commented didn’t do their homework. They looked up the Campus Leadership Project, saw TurningPointUSA, and then decided that they were toxic and had to be avoided. All that stuff about Yurkovskiy’s outreach being “suspect and creepy” in the article is stupid posturing. As one friend said, “the pearl-clutching in the article is hilarious.” It drips with ignorance, posturing, and reputation destruction. They also didn’t know that CLP is focusing on building their own branding and pivoting towards the center of American partisan politics, and are thus breaking away from their affiliation with TurningPointUSA because of its partisan agenda. Again, not doing their homework. But something else was revealed in the very stupid Heights article. As all of the UGBC candidates and representatives were claiming that “partisan politics has no place in our campus politics,” they were so fixated on the Turning Point right-wing agenda. Nearly all of the comments focused on the fact that CLP has historically had ties to Turning Point and “what they represent.” Concerns about “outside groups trying to influence the school’s campaigns” are thus revealed to be worried about which ideas count. Anyone with eyes can clearly see how the UGBC elections are characterized by who can virtue signal to the Woke Left the hardest; anyone who expressed any trepidation about creating an LGBTQ+ resource center given the school’s Catholic identity would be run off the debate stage by the other candidates, and wouldn’t have a shot at being elected. Campus politics is no less tinged with partisan politics than anything else. Julia Spagnola’s comments on the matter are so rich with irony in this regard: “The issue isn’t so much Turning Point’s agenda…I think it’s the fact that a political agenda of any kind is making its way into student government.” Right, because UGBC is very neutral on partisan political agendas. The real issue here is that, to UGBC representatives, the so-called CLP agenda represents a more active conservative constituency within UGBC, like what Christian Guma represented last year. The same Christian Guma who was impeached for being conservative and threatening UGBC’s sclerotic status quo. For the standard member of the Student Assembly of UGBC, this is a threat to the hegemony of the liberal ethos of the organization. For The Heights and all of the attendant left-wing partisans that make up their writing staff, CLP involvement in school politics, with all of their highly partisan policies, is an affront to the current state of the campus culture: entitled progressive yuppies moaning about how horrible things are for everyone. It says so much about who is in charge of UGBC. To them, their left-wing beliefs, which are very partisan and could only exist in a progressive echo-chamber of the most elite, “educated” campuses, are not partisan at all, but simply what’s true and good. Anything else, even stuff that is actually non-partisan, such as mental health resources and campus safety, is part of a right-wing conspiracy to infiltrate politics. They don’t know anything about the person they are defaming, the organization he works for, and they don’t seem to recognize that their beliefs are partisan, or that partisan politics will always be in student government. Ultimately, what it comes down to is a partisan organization using the language of neutrality to do the bidding of maintaining their partisan stranglehold on UGBC. In the process, they defamed a good guy who is trying to empower students across the country to run for student government and make their campuses a better place by slandering him as a deceitful, partisan creep. Given that it’s The Heights, I’m not surprised; they’re hardly the pinnacle of journalistic integrity. But they should apologize and retract their bogus article forthwith. And this goes without saying, but honestly, we should abolish UGBC and reap the benefits of one less left-wing organization that dominates our campus; the people in charge clearly don’t know anything, and glaringly lack self-awareness about the most rudimentary facets of partisan politics. Why would we entrust them with any responsibility at all?
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Patriot Purge Article1/31/2022 James Markis
In early November, Tucker Carlson announced the release of his three-part documentary, Patriot Purge, detailing the true nature of the January 6th “Insurrection”. Ever since the riot at the Capitol took place last January, the mainstream media has peddled lies and conspiracies about how it was an organized insurrection by Trump supporters, Alex Jones, Steve Bannon, and President Trump himself. Carlson, to a hail of controversy and attempts to “cancel” him, was determined to uncover the truth of that winter day in Washington D.C. He begins Part 1 of the documentary by highlighting the similarities of Bush with the War on Terror against Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, and what was now being portrayed as a Domestic War on Terror against Trump supporters who attempted to overthrow the U.S. government by walking into the Capitol unarmed. Carlson interviews Ali Alexander who, along with Alex Jones, was portrayed as the lead insurrectionist urging people to enter the Capitol and murder members of Congress as well as Vice President Mike Pence. Alexander and Jones are shown on video directing people away from the Capitol building and towards their government-approved place of protest. Part 1 also connects how for months the mainstream media encouraged massive rioting and burning of major American cities and how common American citizens felt that was the proper response to anger at the system. Carlson also highlights the role of the FBI in the event, as multiple people who were supposed “insurrectionists” and was leading the charge into the Capitol on video, were FBI informants. The FBI was looking for a reason to destroy Trump supporters, and thus this false-flag operation was carried out to turn what was a peaceful protest into a supposed insurrection. Part 2 of the documentary highlights the abuses of the FBI further, with the breaking into the home of an Alaskan couple who supposedly stole Speaker Pelosi’s laptop. The FBI was completely wrong on this being the couple, but Carlson’s interview with them highlights the violations of the law committed by the FBI in both their search and seizure of items. The most eye-opening aspect of the interview was when it was revealed the FBI took a copy of the Declaration of Independence from the couple as evidence of “radical beliefs”. Carlson also interviews a DEA agent who was forced out of their job, as well as a Fort Bragg female commander who was deemed a domestic terrorist. The role of the FBI in the actual January 6th event, as well as their subsequent attacks on law-abiding, patriotic Americans, was the most disturbing part of the documentary until you watch part 3. Part 3 of the documentary highlights the inhumane treatment these “terrorists” faced and are currently facing in prison. Prisoners were held in solitary confinement for days on end, could not receive legal aid, and faced treatment previously only known to terrorists at Guantanamo Bay. Dick Barnett of Arkansas, who took the famous photo with his feet on Pelosi’s desk, is interviewed by Carlson and highlights the terrible treatment and abuses that he suffered while in prison. He is still forced to wear an ankle bracelet and faces years in jail for his actions on January 6th. Finally, Carlson concludes the documentary with the most solemn part of the day, the death of Ashli Babbitt. A veteran of the United States armed forces, Babbitt was shot at point-blank range in the Capitol with no warning, by a Capitol police officer who was known to be trigger happy, and even left his gun unattended in the bathroom once. Babbitt was unarmed and not attacking anybody, she was simply trying to enter through a broken glass window. The Capitol Hill Police Officer faced no repercussions for the shooting. Carlson interviewed Babbitt’s husband and her mother, and it is clear from the interview she was not a terrorist or extremist, but instead, a patriotic American who voted for Donald Trump. Overall, Patriot Purge offers the true story of what happened on January 6th in Washington D.C. and how it was anything but the insurrection that the media claims. It was a riot at the Capitol, with the urging and planning not of Trump supporters, but of FBI informants, who then, in turn, violated the Constitutional and human rights of those same supporters, including murdering one of them. Carlson does a phenomenal job in this portrayal, and although the left tries its best, he will once again not be canceled for telling the truth.
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Libertarianism is Not Anti-Moralism1/31/2022 Paul Keenan
In his article, “Are Libertarians Conservatives?” our BCR President Tom Sarrouf argued that libertarianism is inherently self-contradictory, due to its alleged opposition to moralism. Here is the core of Sarrouf’s argument: [...] “the problem for the libertarians is that they haven’t quite grasped the notion that libertarianism is a moral position.” Libertarians are moralists! Just think about what they say: “The government ought not legislate morality; it is wrong for the government to legislate morality; the government ought not limit my autonomy to do what I want to do with my own free choice so long as I do not hurt anyone else.” These are clearly moral claims, and they represent the core of the libertarian position. The problem lies in the fact that they believe that the government ought not legislate morality. It misunderstands this key point: all laws legislate some morality, even something as seemingly banal as which side of the road people drive on; if no law is posited on that point, people will die. Indeed, to create a law, one must make the moral argument that we ought to have such a law. And so the error in the libertarian argument is that the conclusion of that argument is to seek the obfuscation of all moral claims and instantiations of morality in law and society, even though they begin from a premise that is moral; in short, it is a contradiction. If libertarians claimed that the government “ought not legislate morality,” they would indeed be guilty of the contradiction highlighted. However, this is simply not the libertarian claim. Sarrouf more accurately summarizes the libertarian claim in the phrase “the government ought not limit my autonomy to do what I want to do with my own free choice so long as I do not hurt anyone else.” This is, of course, a moral claim. It is a demand that the government follow the same moral rules that we recognize as binding when applied to any other organization. There may be libertarians out there in the world who do claim to oppose “legislating morality.” There are incoherent followers of every political ideology. But no prominent libertarian thinker, from Hayek to Friedman to Nozick to Rothbard to Rand, would ever assent to that claim. The following example may help to elucidate the libertarian moral position: It is immoral to lie. That does not mean that if someone lies it would be justified to kill them. The fact that someone has acted immorally does not permit any and every punishment. Ordinary moral intuitions tell us that the response to an immoral act should be proportionate to the severity of the act. It is immoral to respond to a small moral infraction—lying—with a much grander moral infraction—murder. It may be justified to use violence to prevent greater violence: neutralizing a potential mass shooter is indeed a heroic act. A libertarian recognizes that every law is backed by the threat of violence. For many laws, this threat of violence is justified, and morally good. Using violence when necessary to prevent murder, theft, rape, slavery, and so on, is of course morally justified. Using violence to prevent someone from smoking pot is ridiculous and immoral. Libertarianism does not rely on any particular moral foundation, like, say, Aristotelianism or Utilitarianism or Kantianism: there are libertarians who identify with each and every one of these strains of thought, and still come to the same conclusions about the desirability of state violence. Whether one is Christian, or Buddhist, or an atheist, so long as one applies their moral rules consistently to the state, it is not hard to come to libertarian conclusions.
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Thomas Pyle
This season, the Atlanta Braves pulled off a number of phenomenal feats, they won the NL East despite losing their best player, they upset the Brewers and Dodgers to earn a trip to the World Series, but perhaps most importantly they are now hosting three World Series games at Truist Park in Atlanta. All the way back before the COVID-19 pandemic, MLB selected Atlanta to host the 2021 All-Star game in order to show off their new stadium, Truist Park (then SunTrust Park). Despite the cancellation of the 2020 All Star Game in Los Angeles, commissioner Manfred stuck with the choice to play the All Star Game in Atlanta. However, he wouldn’t stick with Atlanta for long. In response to the rumors of voter fraud in the 2020 election and the need for election reform, Georgia passed a series of voting laws. These laws were extremely controversial on social media and in the mainstream media despite numerous states having similar provisions in their own elections. As a result, the city of Atlanta was ‘cancelled’. Commissioner Rob Manfred and MLB owners quickly sought to move the All Star Game out of Atlanta to a less controversial venue. Despite the death of longtime Atlanta Brave and former career home run leader Hank Aaron, MLB stole the All Star Game from the city. Baseball fans and Braves fans were enraged. The mayor of Atlanta was enraged. Even Stacey Abrams tried to convince MLB to keep the All Star Game in Atlanta. But, the owners chose to move the game to Colorado. Notably, Colorado has a number of similar voting provisions in their own election regulations. One of the main differences between Denver and Atlanta election results lies in their demographics. According to the most recent census, Denver’s population is over 75% white while African Americans represent over 50% of Atlanta’s population. The question must be asked: what made Denver a better host city than Atlanta in the eyes of MLB owners? The MLB All Star Game in Denver had 8.3 million viewers, a small increase from the 2019 game and against the trend of increased viewership in major MLB games including the 2020 World Series and the Field of Dreams game. The Braves wouldn’t forget what the owners and commissioner did to them. Despite a rough first half and the season ending injury of one of the best players in the game, Ronald Acuña Jr, the Braves fought their way to a World Series berth. Led by veterans Freddie Freeman, Jon Pederson, Charlie Morton, and the incredible NLCS performance by Eddie Rosario, the Braves were back in the World Series for the first time since 1999. Through the first two games of the World Series, ratings are already on the rise. Game two had over ten million viewers for the Astros victory as they tied the series at one game a piece. Atlanta is now expected to receive even more national attention than the All Star Game would provide, a fact that would not be lost on players, teams, and especially the owners. Atlanta reigns triumphant over MLB yet again, now a World Series victory would only be icing on the cake. Atlanta’s victory over Commissioner Manfred and MLB could prove very important as MLB faces the daunting challenge of agreeing on a new Collective Bargaining Agreement this offseason. Perhaps owners have experienced a loss of faith in the wildly unpopular commissioner and will vote to remove him or perhaps the players, fans, and executives are tired of seeing their favorite sports teams play politics and just want the plain and simple version of America’s pastime. All these issues are likely to be addressed this offseason, but, nonetheless, Atlanta’s victory looms large in both the baseball and political worlds. Expect to see Atlanta and the state of Georgia as a central theme in baseball and political discussions over the next few months.
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Thomas K. Sarrouf, JR.
In the midst of Congressional gridlock surrounding the Build Back Better Act, a now 1.75 trillion dollar spending bill that is being negotiated in Congress, the issues of reconciliation and the Senate filibuster itself have come to the forefront of Congressional politics. Reconciliation is a process that gets around the filibuster, thus making it easier for President Biden and the Democrats, whose majority in both houses of Congress is razor thin, to pass legislation without requiring 60 votes that they certainly lack. The 60-vote requirement in the Senate is a function of the filibuster, which is a rule that requires 60 votes in order to invoke cloture, which is a vote to end debate and come to a vote on a piece of legislation. The filibuster has thus been the tool of prolonging debate ad infinitum and preventing legislation from being passed. The logic of the filibuster is thus: if the party wants to end a filibuster, they will have to make changes that satisfy their opposition so that something gets passed. The filibuster has drawn the ire of Senate Democrats, most recently as they have ascended to the majority in Congress after the 2020 elections. Now that they are in power, the filibuster represents a serious challenge to their legislative agenda, which has led many Democratic leaders to call for it to be scrapped. The filibuster rule, though a part of Senate tradition, and used by both parties throughout American history, is not a passed law, but is only a Senate rule, one which could easily be discarded by the vote of a simple majority. And yet, it remains. In particular, Senator Joe Manchin III (D-WV) has opposed repealing the filibuster, as he considers it to be a dangerous shift towards partisanship. Manchin, a Democrat, is considered to be part of the party’s “moderate” wing, and thinks it is important to have minority participation in lawmaking. When pressed by Meet the Press host Chuck Todd, Manchin said, “Just by assuming that, hey, they will never work with us, that’s the other side. This is tribal. The Republicans will never agree on anything, or the Democrats will never agree….I don’t buy into that.” Moderates like Joe Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), and someone like John Kasich (R-OH) or Liz Cheney (R-WY) on the Republican side, typically do not have much political clout or national influence. Likewise, “moderacy” is not a political ideology, nor is it a policy agenda; rather, it is more of a persuasion or disposition that exists to temper both the liberal-progressive and conservative ideological camps that characterize the Democratic and Republican parties, respectively. Some argue that moderate politicians like Sinema are trying to navigate the political winds of their respective states to come out on top. That could very well be true; ambition and a desire for power are strong motivating forces, and after all, who likes to lose? But the political considerations are complicated and debatable, and we cannot truly know the complicated set of motives and forces that weigh on a politician at any given time, though some arguments are better than others. In his exchange with Chuck Todd, Manchin offered a substantive argument in favor of the filibuster, and I think it’s one that should appeal to moderates. I would argue that the filibuster is not only a tool for moderates to organize its own political constituency, but it is probably their best last hope for saving America. As polarization becomes a larger concern for the unity of the country, the moderate is likely to find himself/herself alienated from both political parties. Both sides have shifted further apart. I remember a time in high school when my history teacher put a Left-Right political line on the board, and then put the Democrats slightly to the left-of-center and the Republicans just to the right-of-center; they were very close to each other. That was just a few years ago, but the data shows that both sides have shifted further from the center, and both sides also have a strong distaste for the other. That being said, there is still a large constituency of moderates in America. Moderates might skew to one side of the aisle or the other; they might be people who haven’t found either party to represent them in past years, though both sides try to court independent voters who don’t stick to one party in any given election cycle. They could be the average person who self-describes as “not political.” It could just mean people who, for various reasons, are not well-informed about politics. The point is less about where the moderate comes from and more about why the filibuster acts in their interests—and in the interests of preserving a unified country. As Sen. Manchin points out, the filibuster requires minority input on a bill before it is passed. It fosters reasoned debate, and requires a ruling majority to respect and listen to their opponents so that they cannot just ram through a piece of controversial legislation. Bear in mind that “opponents” on the other side have the support of many of the majority’s own constituents. The filibuster is thus a mechanism that fosters debate and negotiation, and protects the rights and voice of a ruling minority within the legislative process. It would not be possible for a slim and transient majority to pass a controversial agenda that doesn’t represent the values of much of the country. It also would prevent a flip-flop of policy and legislation every two-to-four years when the other party regains control. Rather, the moderates would hold onto the balance of power and maintain it over the long-term, imposing a boring moderacy on the country at large. Given that the filibuster requires 60 votes, various constituencies would have to listen to each other, negotiate, and come to a compromise, otherwise achieving nothing. It’s been said that when there is compromise, no one is truly happy with the result, but when there is compromise, prudence rules the day, and things get done. The Founding Fathers recognized and envisioned a system that moved slowly, and where change would be difficult, but would ensure lasting change. Gridlock is a feature, not a flaw. With each presidential candidate threatening to undo the legacy of his (and soon to be her) predecessor, America gets caught up into a partisan whirlwind. The filibuster would slow things down, temper the extremes of both sides, and make sure that any changes made in the country can command the assent of a true, or as John C. Calhoun put it, a concurrent majority, one that aggregates not the mere number of voters, but the varied and oftentimes opposing interests in the country. There are tens of millions of American voters who are moderates or centrists. There are also many partisans who like to identify as moderate because it sounds nice or because it offers the pretense of common ground. For all those who don such a label, or who simply see the polarization and partisan divide to be not only exhausting, but genuinely dangerous to the existence of a unified country, the filibuster is the powerful tool to seeing a return to bipartisanship. The filibuster is not a Jim Crow relic, as many race-obsessed Democrats falsely claim. Avoid the temptation to seek after a politics that offers instant gratification, and instead settle for a more workable, sensible, and calmer politics that allows us to move past the fraught tensions that characterize our current moment. The filibuster is thus a safeguard against the pervasive radicalism of both sides. Guard it jealously.
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COVID is Over. Leave me Alone.11/1/2021 Ethan Folkman
The COVID-19 pandemic has been around for almost 20 months. Vaccines are readily available to any adult who wants them and will soon be open to children. Yet for some reason, 54% of Americans still believe that the pandemic is getting worse, according to recent Gallup polling. In a similar vein, 60% of Americans believe that the vaccine should be mandated by employers. This is an insane conjecture and one that runs in direct contrast to the fundamental values of liberty in the United States. It’s time to stop the mandates, stop the division, and return to the founding principle of individual rights that helped to make our country the greatest in the world. Before getting into the argument over individual rights, it’s worthwhile to state the facts on COVID. By polling data, concerns surrounding the delta variant are the most commonly cited reasons for supporting the mandates. People see the spike in case numbers and instantly want to return to masks, along with forcing everyone else to get vaccinated. But there’s a problem with that. Yes, case rates are higher. But death rates aren’t matching the infection rates. For example in Florida, a state that has remained largely open throughout the pandemic, the 7-day rolling average for deaths as of October 26th is 5. In Massachusetts, which has been far more strict, that number is 13. The science is clear. COVID simply isn’t the deadly pandemic that it was before. And yet, a sizable portion of the country is still holding on to the belief that there is a real danger, and that we need to sacrifice freedom in favor of safety. Americans also need to begin taking responsibility for their own safety. If someone is worried about catching the virus, there are multiple options available. Get the vaccine. Continue to wear a face mask or distance. That decision is yours. It’s a free country after all. But don’t go forcing that same decision on everybody else. This country was born on a system of individualism. Every adult in the country has the capacity to make a personal risk assessment and decide what is best for them. If someone chooses not to wear a mask anymore, then that is their decision. The problem arises when civility is thrown out the window. People who refused the shot have been treated horribly. These people are viciously attacked. Anybody who supports personal choice is castigated as a murderer and is viewed as subhuman. As one example, President Biden himself has called those who don’t support mask mandates Neanderthals. This behavior needs to change. If the government wants vaccine-hesitant people to get the shot, calling them stupid is not the way to do it. In contrast to this, President Trump has also been very outspoken about his support for the vaccine. But he takes a different approach to promote it. In his own words, “I believe totally in your freedoms. I do, you’re free, you got to do what you have to do. But I recommend taking the vaccines. I did it, it’s good, take the vaccines.” In my opinion, this is the right way to go about it. Acknowledge freedom of choice, then recommend that people take it. This makes people feel like their choices matter, and that they have a level of informed choice in what happens to them. It’s not just a small subset of the population that is in favor of these mandates. The federal government itself continues to force down vaccine mandates, citing safety concerns. For a group of people that ruthlessly criticized the Trump administration’s messaging during the pandemic, this administration continuously misleads and misdirects the public, falsely telling the American people that their unvaccinated neighbors are presenting a serious threat to them. Dr. Fauci continues to go on the news and tell people that they need to mask up, even after vaccination. This is just not true. If you are vaccinated, your chances of getting the virus are minuscule. Your chances of hospitalization and death are even lower. All this messaging does is deepen the political divide in our country, and it needs to stop. It’s time for the Biden administration and the media to follow the science and acknowledge the fact that this virus isn’t as dangerous as it was a year ago. At this point, the pandemic is nothing but a power grab for an administration that refuses to let a good crisis go to waste. We’ve been at this pandemic for a year and a half. We’ve had to sacrifice a lot, and now it’s time to move on and get back to our lives. The media preaches that we’ve entered a “new normal”, but I don’t think we have. COVID was a temporary setback, and now with the vaccine available, we can go back to normal. The government has fulfilled its role and should now take the back seat as states open up again. The stigma surrounding unvaccinated people needs to be broken. Most importantly, we need to make individual rights respected again.
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Sean Kelly
On May 17, the Supreme Court voted to consider the Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case regarding the Gestational Age Act (GAA) passed in Mississippi in 2018. This legislation required physicians to determine the age of the fetus before performing an abortion, and prohibited abortion after the fetus had reached 15 weeks in gestation with exceptions for cases where the mother’s life is in danger or a severe fetal abnormality. Previously called a “right to privacy” under Roe vs. Wade (1973), the Casey vs. Planned Parenthood (1992) decision framed abortion as an intrinsic liberty, without stating exactly how restrictions on abortion violated individual rights. The Casey decision also established the “undue burden” which declares that any law regulating abortion cannot impose “A substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion before the fetus attains viability” according to the opinion written by Justices O’Conner, Kennedy, and Souter. In the Whole Women’s Health vs. Hellerstedt case, the Supreme Court clarified that a law prohibiting abortion must 1. Further a valid state interest, 2. Confer benefits that outweigh burdens, and 3. Be based on credible evidence. The decision to consider Dobbs combined with the decision to let the Texas Heartbeat Act play out in lower courts, signified a shift in the court, one that may have major consequences. In both the District and Circuit courts, the GAA was deemed unconstitutional under Casey, which established that it was unconstitutional to prohibit abortions before the fetus was “viable”, generally agreed upon at about 24 weeks. The Attorney General of Mississippi, Lynn Fitch, claims that unborn babies are protected under the 14th amendment, and there is “Nothing in constitutional text, structure, history, or tradition [that] supports a right to abortion”. In the petition to the Supreme Court, the State of Mississippi asked the Supreme Court to consider 3 questions. 1. Are all pre-viability prohibitions on abortion unconstitutional? 2. Should pre-viability prohibitions on abortion be evaluated under the “under burden test” under Casey, or the Hellerstedt benefits vs. burdens structure? 3. Do abortion providers have a third-party ability to challenge abortion regulations? Now, the Supreme Court only agreed to consider the first question, which is a positive sign for conservatives. Had the Supreme Court agreed to consider the second or third question, this would have given the Court a chance to clarify what states are and aren’t allowed to regulate when it comes to abortion, but only the first question poses a direct challenge to Roe vs. Wade. Similarly, out of three abortion-related cases petitioning to be heard by the Court, Dobbs gives the Court the chance to revisit Roe vs. Wade. Rutledge v. Little Rock Family Planning Services, a case concerning the legality to get an abortion because the unborn child has been diagnosed with Down Syndrome, and Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky v. Box, a case challenging if and when minors are allowed to receive abortions without the consent of guardians, would likely be wins for the Pro-Life movement; they would not plainly contradict Roe vs. Wade. With a 6-3 conservative majority, the judiciary has a chance to make an unprecedented change, though Chief Justice Roberts does prefer to decide cases narrowly which could limit the win for conservatives. Since Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the court, conservatives have held high hopes for the Supreme Court to revisit Roe vs. Wade. Though no justices have confirmed which way they will vote on Dobbs, it is likely that the Mississippi law will be upheld, which would do serious damage to the precedents set by Roe and Casey, if not prompt the Court to overturn them altogether. In the case that the Court does not overturn Roe or Casey outright, states would likely try to pass legislation in direct contradiction with Roe vs. Wade in an attempt to bring it to the Supreme Court. Should Roe vs. Wade be overturned, the issue would be sent back to the states for them to determine legislation. This case presents one of the first opportunities for perhaps President Trump’s greatest achievement to foreshadow just how far this conservative judiciary is willing to go. If the Chief Justice is the only conservative to vote against the GAA, the opinion would fall to the most senior member of the conservative bloc. Here’s to the Clarence Thomas Court. https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/21/opinions/clarence-thomas-supreme-court-power-toobin/index.h tml
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What is America?10/4/2021 What is America? A question that has the simple answer of being a country that is the predominant force in the world, but also has a much more complex and complicated answer. America begins and ends with its own founding nearly 250 years ago, where the greatest men of their generation came together to form a government based on the principles of liberty, freedom, and self-determination. America has always been based on these ideals and throughout its history, it has been dedicated to the sole purpose of benefiting and enhancing the lives of its citizens. The concept of what is America must be broken down into the original intentions of the founding fathers, and the current situation with which the country finds itself. The founders’ basis for Independence and the American experiment at large is found in the tyrannical nature of the British Crown and the lack of natural rights. As Thomas Jefferson stated in the Declaration of Independence, “Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” Jefferson explains the exact reason for the American Revolution by highlighting the lack of accountability by the British government to the desires of the colonists. A new government based on the safety and happiness of the people and for those same people to achieve a substantive life, not just as a cog in the system of the Monarch. This is the historical basis for what America truly is and was intended to be; a country based on the interests of the common man and a government that heeds to such desires through representative government. America at its core is a country built upon the ideas of common sacrifice for the greater good as well as representative government based on the ideas of protecting the best interests of its people. Validating the ideas promised by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln highlights the same themes in the Gettysburg Address at the height of the American divide. He began the speech with the famous line, “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Lincoln did not trace the beginning of the American experiment to the Constitution but instead to 1776 and the Declaration of Independence itself. Though America has undergone significant changes and hurdles throughout history, it has always strived towards the concepts of equality and liberty for its citizens.
This leads us into the 21st century and America’s core is once again being tested before our very eyes. America has become a place that no longer resembles the ideals promised by Jefferson and Lincoln but instead enters an era where liberty, freedom, and equality are limited by the highest powers of government. The leaders of the American experiment, on both sides of the political aisle, no longer believe in these bedrock American principles, and instead, their care for the common people is lower than ever before in history. America has faced extremely turbulent times before in its history with social strife, economic hardships, and outright Civil War, but in these times, there were always leaders truly fighting for American citizens. In 2021, we have leaders who argue in defense of American citizens but nobody truly fights for the common people. American politicians are more willing to fight for the elites of society, such as the wealthy corporatists, lobbyists, and of course themselves. This doesn’t even include the foreign entities and foreign leaders who have more loyalty from American leaders than the people they supposedly represent. Politicians care more about illegal immigrants and foreign refugees than they do about the hundreds of thousands dying every year from suicide and drug overdoses. Instead of helping Americans struggling with addiction and overdoses, politicians instead refuse to act so multi-billion dollar drug companies can continue to profit off the recovery of struggling Americans. This country has become the elitist, self-centered political club that the founders feared to such a degree. John Adams highlighted this fear, writing in a letter to Jefferson about the new nation, “In every society known to man, an aristocracy has risen up in the course of time, consisting of a few rich and honorable families who have united with each other against the people.” This aristocratic class Adams forewarns about is no longer fantasy, but instead is the very reality that exists today. America is the greatest country in the history of the world, but the further we stray away from the founding fathers and their principles, the further we devolve into nothing more than a collection of people dominated by a superior class based on money and corruption. As John Adams originally stated, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” This perfectly encapsulates the American experiment and foreshadows dark days ahead for our amazing country if we cannot correct course and recommit to the ideals of liberty, freedom, and self-determination.
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What is America?10/4/2021 Paul Keenan
This article is part of our “What is America?” political theory symposium, hosted by BC Republicans. On Tuesday, October 5, 2021, the BC Republicans will hold a discussion of what America means, both at home and abroad. Ultimately, America is an ideal that is embodied in a people and a history. These two aspects are both necessary to fully capture the essence of America. The former is insufficient on its own: America is not merely some theoretical ideal, separate from the flesh-and-blood American people or their specific American history. The essence of America must include our Revolution, our Civil War, and our defeat of the Axis powers. At the same time, America is not merely a people with a history, like every other people and every other nation in the world. America is founded on and continuously strives to fulfill a uniquely American ideal. More precisely, the American ideal is the notion that virtue and happiness can only be pursued under conditions of liberty, and the guarantee of liberty requires the limitation of government. Because America is an ideal embodied, that specific embodiment can and has changed over the course of our history. Who can doubt that the descendants of Ellis Island immigrants are as fully American as the descendants of the Puritans? The American people are not merely those who first sailed over on the Mayflower; America has been and will continue to be enlarged and enriched by the assimilation of new peoples, each with new contributions to make to the American story. Strong ideas need not fear weak ideas. Strong cultures need not fear weaker cultures. Those who believe American culture must be isolated and coddled to protect it from outside influence betray their own lack of faith in American culture. American culture will not be destroyed or weakened by contact with other cultures; American culture grows stronger and stronger with every new contact and interaction. Who can look upon a McDonald’s in Vietnam, and not conclude that American culture is strong? The very same country in which we lost a war trying to prevent the spread of communism is now voluntarily importing American capitalist culture. Even our biggest geopolitical enemies send the children of their elites to be educated in American schools. Millions of families give up everything they own to cross oceans to have even a chance of starting a life in America. The whole world can see American greatness clearly—except, it seems, many Americans. The attack on American greatness comes from two directions: first, obviously, from the Left, who hate the ideal of limited government, as well as any celebration of tradition as such. The second direction of attack is the so-called populist right, who argue that in order to save America from inevitable decline, we must abandon the American ideal and become like every other blood-and-soil nation in the world—“At least Hungary has a high fertility rate!” What will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world, and suffers the loss of his own soul? America is a nation with a soul, and we cannot ever forget that.
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Anilda Rodrigues
On September 12, The Gavel published their article, “Low Income Individuals Bear the Brunt of Abortion Restrictions.” The article is replete with factual and logical errors. Below is a point-by-point response to the article in question. ____________________________________________________________________________________ An important tenet of Roe v. Wade is the access to a SAFE abortion, as justices acknowledged the danger of illegal abortions—seeing as by 1965 illegal abortions made up one-sixth of all pregnancy related deaths. In contrast, under Roe v. Wade abortions have become one of the safest medical procedures with a 99% safety record. Abortion has a fairly high efficacy rate, meaning that the vast majority of the abortions performed end with the desired outcome. That outcome is a dead human baby. When an abortion fails? It means that an abortionist attempted to end a baby’s life, but (fortunately) failed. Is there such thing as “safe abortion”? No, there is nothing safe about a procedure in which nearly 100% of its victims end up dead. Regardless of how “safe” abortion seems to be for the mother, it does not make it any more “right.” (Keep in mind that the “99% safety record” is referring to physical health. The mental health of post abortive mothers is not included in this percentage). Capital punishment is “safe” for everyone in the execution room expect the person being executed. It is no different here. The baby being executed during an abortion is not safe. Scholars have estimated that before Roe v. Wade between 20-25% of all pregnancies ended in abortion, demonstrating that abortions always have and will continue to happen. Therefore, it is clear that bans on abortions do not decrease their rates, but instead puts those who can get pregnant at greater risk of fatality or injury by blocking life-saving healthcare.” It is unreasonable to think that making something illegal will not decrease its occurrence. If shoplifting was not illegal, I can only imagine how much more common it would be. The pro-life movement is not merely interested in abolishing abortion. Rather, the forefront of this movement is to create a culture of life. But it is impracticable to create a culture of life when governments themselves are sanctioning abortions, in a society that glamorizes women for obtaining abortions. Laws do not always follow ethics; but ethics should be at the forefront of all laws we create. Laws do not always dictate decisions people choose to make, but they certainly do have a powerful effect. In comparison, imagine it’s 1862, and a white slave owner was to say: “Slavery will always exists, so don’t bother fighting it.” Though this sounds absurd, it is somewhat understandable why one may utter such statement given that slavery had been a world wide practice that has lasted for millennia. Arguably we still have slavery to this day: sex trafficking, child exploitation, etc. However, just become something has “always” happened it does not mean we must forever endure it and not attempt to diminish it. This same slave owner approaches an abolitionist and says: “Racism in this country is too grave. Freeing the slaves will only infuriate white supremacists and make them terrorize black people. Abolishing slavery will not help them achieve equality and freedom because people’s mind on slavery and racism has not changed. It’s pointless to fight for liberation. Enslaving them is the best we can do for them.” Needless to say, like any faithful activist, this abolitionist is not convinced to give up this fight, though concerned for what life in America would be like for black folks after abolishing slavery. Fast forward to 1865, the Ku Klux Klan was founded and black Americans continued to be subjugated and endured more inhumane and unjust treatment. But would you ever say that black Americans should have stayed put and remained slaves? Despite the struggles ahead of slavery liberation, it does not for a second suggest that slavery was “fine” or any “better” than Jim Crow. Despite knowing that terror will arise, people will die, brutality and other forms of violence will continue, it does not justify going back to slavery. Abolitionists and slaves did what at the time was likely seen as “impossible”: they fought the status quo. Slavery was a normal practice in the Americas, Africa, and Asia. Imagine saying “slavery will always exist” as an excuse to keep slavery legal. (I am not saying that The Gavel condones slavery; in fact, I’m sure they do not, so the logic of this analogy should hold for them.) Similarly, “abortions will always exist, therefore do not restrict it” is a flawed logic. Even if abortions will always exist, it does not mean that laws should disregard the right to life of preborn human beings. It is also quite ironic to refer to abortion as “life-saving heathcare” given that abortion is literally a life-ending act of violence. It does not save lives, and it is not care. “The bill puts people’s lives at risk and doesn’t end abortions at all.” It is very much true that SB8 does not end abortion. But what it will do is save around 150 babies every day. Not being allowed to obtain an abortion is not what is putting women at risk. The abortionists working illegally and in unsanitary conditions are the ones at fault for women who die after obtaining an illegal abortion. These abortionists are willing to terminate a life in the womb for profit even at the expense of causing the woman to die. These abortionists are the ones risking both a woman’s and her baby’s life; they are the ones we should be infuriated by, and they must be legally prosecuted for their crimes (i.e. putting a woman’s life at risk, working without a license/working in uninspected “medical” facilities etc). “SB 8 does not end abortions; it only ends safe abortions for poor Texans. The wealthy always have and always will have access to the best medical care available, leaving poor and disadvantaged people in the dust…..The ability to travel for abortion care is a privilege only the wealthy were able to access, leaving low income people scrambling to get care as soon as the temporary ban had passed. Abortion is healthcare and therefore people will always seek the procedure, even under criminalization as people did last year.” Being rich is undeniably a privilege. It’s easier for you to pay to have your crimes covered and live without facing the penalty. For example, millionaire Peter Chadwick murder his wife Quee Choo in 2012 in Newport, California. After being charged with murder in 2015, he went into hiding for nearly five years until he was finally found in Mexico. How was he able to travel around for so long without being caught? Money. If a poor man committed murder he would very likely be caught within days of the crime. Why? Because he’s not rich. But one would never say, “let’s make murder legal since rich people are more likely to get away with it.” Furthermore, a rich white sexual assaulter is able to pay-off his victim to encourage her to stay silent and to not denounce him. But a poor sexual assaulter would not be able to offer money to pay-off his victim because he does not have the privilege of being rich. But we would never say “sexual assault should tolerated because rich dudes are getting away with it while the poor men are being arrested.” Sexual assault and murder are both wrong, so it will not be condoned regardless if one group is more likely to be found guilty than another. We also know that these crimes will unfortunately always happen, but that does not change the fact that these two acts are unjust and thus should remain illegal. (What we can do, and should do, is understand why one racial or economic group is more likely to be caught than others. And in doing so, we will not declassify murder and sexual assult as a crime, but instead work to understand why only some of the criminals are caught. Just because poor and black people are more likely to be negatively affected by a law, it simply does not mean that this law is unjust. What it likely means is that there are hidden factors that are making a group more likely to be affected than others.) Although the claim about the rich having easier access to abortion sounds very true, it does not say such in terms of the legality of abortion. Compared to the poor, the rich are far more likely to get away with essentially any crime. Yet, it does not call for us to be lenient on every crime and stop prosecuting criminals. So unless the article provides an explanation for why abortion is a “woman’s right” (which it does not, and which abortion is not), then the point of rich people having easier access is moot. “Social welfare services such as accessible sex education, contraceptives, universal childcare, paid maternity and paternity leave, etc. have been proven to lower abortion rates, so if decreasing abortion rates is the goal of SB 8, why would these policies not be enacted? Is it because keeping people in poverty and communities of color disenfranchised while effectively killing them by preventing life-saving medical care maintains the Texas Republican stronghold? Possibly.” Why is the Democratic party so invested in making sure that black women have access to abortion? Is it really because they care so much about black lives that they are okay with not only funding abortions in the country, but also funding abortion overseas, specifically in Africa? Many more millions of black people would be present in America today (presumably a strength to the Democratic party, but they seem to be doing themselves a huge mis-favor). If you care about black lives, a great first step is to stop killing them in the womb. But most Democrats do not seem to care about certain black lives. What Democratic politicians seem to be more in love with is population control— but the population being targeted most severely are black babies and babies with disabilities. “SB 8 maintains traditional Texan Christian values, while simultaneously finding a way to further deprive low income and communities of color from “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” by blocking medical care and worsening poverty rates.” Again, abortion is not medical care. Care does not involve the deliberative and intentional killing of a human life. Second, if the way to improve poverty is by killing black babies in the womb, then no. Please suggest an actual solution in preventing black maternal mortality rate and addressing poverty. The US Declaration of Independence grants us the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Notice that life is the first mentioned. With no right to life, no other rights matter. There is no pursuing happiness if you don’t first have basic protection for your life. Abortion strips a baby from his or her right to life and thereby preventing this life from ever enjoying any other rights, such as liberty or the ability to pursue happiness. “Luckily there is hope, since the Department of Justice is suing the state of Texas for the unconstitutionality of the ban by defying long-standing Supreme Court precedent. This is a rapidly developing story, but all people, whether you have a uterus or not, should be paying attention.” All people, with or without uterus, should indeed care about abortion. You probably have often heard the chant “no uterus, no opinion.” Notice that we do not see that here, likely because the heartbeat bill sets abortion restrictions, in which case it is perfectly acceptable for men to voice their opinions in disapproval. In any case, men should be speaking up on abortion issues because human rights violations are every human’s business. ____________________________________________________________________________________ The Texas Heartbeat Bill is a great step in the right direction. It is far from a perfect bill, but it motivates the abortionists, abortion facilities, health insurances and others involved in the abortion to not part take in abortion when the preborn heartbeat has been detected. The consequence of potentially being sued encourages individuals to not engage in such affairs. This is real progress. It’s unfortunate that the progressive voices of Boston College don’t see it as such. But rest assured, this is only the beginning. The momentum within the Pro-Life movement has only been getting stronger, and we won’t be stopping with SB8. Despite the limitations of this bill, it will save lives. Many babies will be saved from the abortion industry. That is worthy of celebration. If you are encouraged by the steps the anti-abortion movement has been taking to save vulnerable lives in the womb, please consider donating to Live Action and the Students for Life of America, two organizations working tireless to educate and mobilize people to be a voice for the voiceless. Having a baby in an unplanned pregnancy is not the worst thing that can happen to you. One of the worst things that can happen is you allowing a blood-thirsty, money-hungry abortion industry to profit off of violence being committed inside your own womb. The women of Texas—the black women of Texas—do not need anyone’s pity. What all women need is compassion, something abortion does not provide. Women in Texas who choose to not get an abortion or are unable to get an abortion will have other options. By supporting these pregnancy resource centers you will be helping many women facing unplanned pregnancies. With the heartbeat law in effect, mothers will be in much need of our help, from pro-life and pro-choice people alike. Pregnancy Resource Centers in Texas: Westside Pregnancy Center - El Paso, TX (915) - 703 - 3001 Fort Worth Pregnancy Center - Fort Worth, TX (817) - 458 - 8339 Prestonwood Pregnancy Center - Dallas, TX (972) - 428 - 4700 Trotter House - Austin, TX (512) - 476 - 7774 Houston Coalition for Life - Houston, TX (713) - 395 - 1330 The Pregnancy Help Center - Lake Jackson, TX (979) - 297 - 3622 Any Woman Can - San Antonio, TX (210) - 370 - 3939 The future is life.
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THOMAS K. SARROUF, JR.
It has been said that the mob that stormed The Capitol was a threat to democracy. Wrong! That mob was democracy, and the populist (and democratic) impulses of the mob are an existential threat to the Republic. As John Adams wrote of the government in the Massachusetts Bill of Rights, “to the end it may be a government of laws and not of men.” The American conservative is one who, at the very least, strives to uphold America’s founding documents and the values contained therein. One of these core founding principles is the separation of powers between branches of government, but also the notion that the sovereign should be stripped of all power. In America, the people are sovereign, for it is from the people that the government “derive[s] their just powers” and legitimacy. By keeping power out of the hands of the sovereign through the creation of a republican government, the Founders hoped to extend the longevity of the American way for all time, and avoid the tendency of democracies to devolve into tyranny. Thus, an irreducible facet and value of conservatism is and should be anti-populism. Populism appeals to the democratic impulses of man. We can understand this by evaluating the rhetoric of President Trump, who routinely criticized the “swamp” in Washington: the cabal of political elites, the mainstream media, lobbyists and “special interests” and the academic intelligentsia of unelected bureaucrats running the administrative state. He often called these people “sick people,” “stupid people who do not know what they are doing,” and said that “[he] alone [could] fix it.” By contrast to the “swamp,” he placed the “average American.” This is the core of political populism: a distrust of traditional politicians and political processes, cries of a “broken Washington,” and a suggestion that the average person should be in charge. It is exactly the same idea that is routinely captured in the Leftist phrase, “power to the people.” We can also see the democratic parallel, as literal self-rule is the heart of the democratic way. But we are not a democracy, and thank God for that. We, the average people of America, do not belong in power; that is the place for elected officials, who are supposed to represent the best of the people. Our officials come from the people and are elected by the people, but they are not the people once they ascend into their governmental roles. The government is a separate entity from the people. When President Obama says that “the government is us,” not only is he wrong--seriously mistaken--but he also commits a grave offense against the American philosophy. We should not follow in the footsteps of his errors. And the answer to elected officials not living up to the standards of the institutions to which they belong is not to become complacent with the vices of populism. Such complacency abandons the high values that formed our civic institutions; it is about recapturing the formative spirit of those institutions within our civic life. It is making the officials worthy of the positions to which they are elected. Our politics has to get away from the idea that “I am not going to vote for this GOP swamp creature” because they represent the “establishment.” That is falling hook line-and-sinker for the Leftist and democratic position that individuals should have priority in politics. We should like what politicians say insofar as they convey ideas that comport with American values and policies that will be effective for helping Americans. We are not “swamp creatures” versus “the people,” we are conservatives locked in battle against forces that are bent on subverting our way of life; we must not fall into false distractions and fall for lies that pit us against one another. For example, I like Senator Ben Sasse, not because he’s a “good guy,” which I am sure he is, but because he says many good and true things about the American philosophy, and because I agree with his policy proposals, such as repealing the Seventeenth Amendment. The idea that we have to vote for people, because only a certain person can solve the problem, or because only they really know the problems of Americans and care about them, is a path to the perdition of tyranny. At the core of the American philosophy is a distrust of the ability of the people to directly rule themselves, which is why our government is a representative republic; stoking the frustrations of our flawed institutions by invoking a populist rhetoric that is inherently linked to an individual will doom those institutions forever. I return to Adams: a government of laws, and not of men. The populist impulse that places a priority on a person is neither conservative nor American. America under populism will not long endure.
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Don't Date a Liberal9/5/2021 Thomas K. Sarrouf Jr.
I am the only conservative in my family. Everyone on my mom’s side, with the exception of my late grandfather, is left-leaning, and everyone on my dad’s side, including our large extended family, is quite liberal and increasingly progressive. My dad might be the only exception, as he is personally conservative, though is “moderate for moderacy’s sake,” which might be considered a soft form of Burkean prudential conservatism. But as far as staunch traditional conservative politics goes, I stand alone. It is actually a meme in my family, as any political conversation is a 1v15, almost by definition. And that is all fine with me. The unconditional love of family is higher than politics, and I love my family dearly, politics aside. A valuation of the family as the fundamental unit of society is essential to conservatism; in short, when it comes to family, “we’ve got to stick together” is rightly the conservative motto. Being the sole conservative in my family has also been grounding for me personally. As my friends like to spurn “the Left” as such, I must be more careful and considerate, lest I unfairly damn my own kin! Being the sole conservative has imbued a certain level of respect for the Left, and keeps me slightly more restrained, which I think is necessary, especially these days. A story: at a family holiday gathering a couple years ago, one aunt asked me if I felt burdened by the liberal ethos of the family, or if that difference made me resent them in some way. Channeling my inner Aristotle, I replied, “filial piety is a virtue.” I meant that only as a facetious way of saying “no.” My philosophy professor would have laughed at such a joke; sadly for me, my family is not versed in the intricacies of Aristotelian virtue taxonomies, so they were mildly offended. They interpreted it as me saying that I love them from the necessity of virtue rather than unconditional love, and I must admit that is not an unfair interpretation; I should have been more straightforward. But as the conversation continued, we ended up talking about whether I would date a liberal. My straightforward answer was that I would not. They, again, were offended, as they took that as a personal slight against them. Leave it to the Left to take things personally. They conflated being a member of the family with building a family with someone else. Perhaps because they all agreed, more or less, this was not such a manifest issue, or because the landscape of politics has shifted in a more partisan direction since they were building the family. Point being, a conversation ensued, and I thought my reasons for why I would not date a liberal were worth putting in writing, so here they are: the psychological argument; the argument from culture; and the question of judgment. A disclaimer. These arguments cut both ways. I will be looking at things from a conservative angle, but for the liberal reader, these arguments are still worthy of consideration, albeit in reverse. Also, these arguments are hardly deductive proofs, and are not hard and fast rules. There are plenty of exceptions. The Psychological Argument Individuals are psychologically different. Interactions between individuals are thus governed in part by the interaction between the psychological profiles of the individuals in question. Those traits and characteristics that we find annoying about another person, or endearing or desirable, is the relational agreement or disagreement between myself and the other. It’s not relative; there are some traits that are objectionably intolerable and undesirable. But relationships are somewhat beholden to the psychological “goodness-of-fit” principle. That is simply at the level of the individual. There is also relevant and interesting empirical data about how various groups of people differ psychologically. For instance, men and women are psychologically different along the “Big 5” personality trait model (sadly, all of the information I am about to present exists behind a paywall, but to learn more about these phenomena, go to https://www.understandmyself.com/ and take the official “Big Five Aspects Scale” test). Women are more agreeable compared to men; women are slightly more orderly than men, and men are slightly more industrious than women; women are significantly higher in neuroticism (negative emotion) compared to men; men are rated higher in intellect, which is defined as interest in abstract ideas, compared to women. These are just a few of the major differences. These are not laws of nature, but by looking at the results of someone’s test, it is possible to guess their gender with perhaps 70% accuracy, which suggests a considerable psychological difference between the sexes in aggregate. So on top of individual-level differences, there is also a pattern that emerges that suggests sexual difference. Superimposed on top of that are differences in political and moral psychology. Liberals are significantly higher in “openness to experience” than conservatives, and conservatives rank much higher in levels of conscientiousness than liberals. There are also other trait differences, though they are less pronounced or do not predict any political leaning. Jonathan Haidt’s work on moral psychology shows a similar pattern: liberals tend to value harm/care and fairness/reciprocity, while conservatives value those same two moral foundations, albeit less than liberals, as well as authority, sanctity/purity, and ingroup/loyalty. Thus, we see that people with different political ideologies are likely to have some sort of underlying psychological difference. To review, there are individual-level psychological differences, which plays a role in how well people are able to get along. For instance, someone who loves to go out and party, which would indicate a high level of extroversion, might find someone who stays in on weekends, indicative of low levels of extroversion, to be quite boring. Stack these differences up for each trait, and one can see why two people might not get along. But then add gender differences, and on top of that, the underlying differences in political psychology, and one could see how these compound to make a relationship difficult. Of course, it is conceivable that liberals and conservatives fall in love and make it work, as the differences could also cancel each other out, but as Jordan Peterson says, “It’s very difficult for people who widely differ on those dimensions to come to consensus, because it’s not just a matter of opinion, it’s really a matter of really different types of people.” To demonstrate this, I composed a matrix of what this might look like:
The Argument from Culture I would not want to paint the picture that political belief is solely the basis of our psychological tendencies or characteristics; if political belief is determined this way, then there is no reason to assume that all belief is not merely the product of personal psychological, biological, and neurochemical variations between individuals; if this analysis is taken too far, one gets the picture that all human ideas are merely the product of external forces, which is an overly-reductionist view of the human being. Furthermore, it paints a troubling picture with respect to man’s freedom; Haidt’s work proves less problematic in this regard, as his idea of the “moral matrix” is that these five traits are something akin to the Lockean faculties, and open to revision within the human being; in fact, if Haidt is able to talk about it as moral psychology at all, that is because man is free to form judgments. There is an entire realm of transcendent political philosophy that exists in addition to the psychological nature of man; we have spiritual, intellectual, and physical dimensions integrated into one being, so in addition to the psychological basis for political belief, there are also real reasons that inform political beliefs. Contra Freud, all reason is not rationalization. The argument from culture stems from the proposition that “politics is downstream from culture.” In other words, political beliefs do not exist in a vacuum, but are informed by larger cultural norms and values. These cultural values are antecedent to political society, and inform the structure, laws, and procedures that the political society follows. For instance, the equality of people was the cultural value that inspired the overthrow of the so-called “divinely sanctioned” monarchy during the American Revolution. Another example of this is the observation that countries with majority Muslim populations do not, as a general rule, have high levels of negative liberty, and the religion informs how the political society takes shape. Again, conservatives place a great deal of emphasis on conserving the “Judeo-Christian values” that undergird the American political sensibility. Therefore, many of the political differences between people are actually indicative of larger cultural chasms; this is not always the case, but the exceptions seem to prove the rule. This is increasingly true between conservatives and progressives, as they make a number of vastly different assumptions of human nature and the world. In the realm of dating, this would mean that people with differing politics have differing politics because they have different values, and it is the value differences that count. The value differences point to the fact that two people want different things, not just politically, but in life. A conservative might want low levels of welfare because they value individual responsibility and achievement, whereas a liberal might support a robust social safety net because they value solidarity and the common good. In a political analysis, one could break down these values and give arguments, but in the realm of dating, what matters is not why people differ in values so much as the fact that people have different values, which like psychological differences, can lead to significant strife and discord between a couple. This argument probably does not hold as strongly for moderates, as the moderates likely value a lot of the same things, though one still has to analyze why someone is moderate. It’s the underlying beliefs that inform our politics, and it is those beliefs that matter most in a relationship. Thus, the argument from culture. A caveat: the proposition that “politics is downstream from culture” is not true, strictly speaking. It isn’t false, but it is, as a means of explaining the genesis of political beliefs, incomplete. More properly considered, it is a two-way street: politics draws on larger cultural norms and traditions, and the legal and political structures and decisions can likewise change and shape the culture. The reader will notice that my argument does not require the proposition to be solely true, but I only make the caveat to correct a popular albeit insufficient political argument. A Question of Judgment Above, the policies themselves were not the subject of inquiry, but the underlying values that informed those policies. Here, I want to say that the policies themselves actually matter when it comes to dating. The policies affect the lives of America and the world. The policies shape our social, political, and economic landscape. If the person with whom I propose to build a family supports policies that I believe will make the country, the life of my children, and me worse off, why would I marry her? Small political policy differences are one thing. But if two people are substantially disagreeing on many, most, or all political issues, and each thinks the other’s policies are doing harm to the country, then how highly can they really judge each other? I am an isolationist and nationalist. I am strongly opposed to so-called abortion rights. I am in favor of low taxes, banning pornography, and the proliferation of religion in schools. I strongly support gun rights, federalism, and constitutional originalism. If my spouse opposes all of those things, is it really a good idea to marry her? I think that other ideas are not good for America. If my spouse is to propose political policies that I think are ruinous to the country, what do I think of her judgment? If I say, “Well, she is judging wrong on all of these policy positions, and those ideas are, I think, quite harmful to the country for reasons X, Y, and Z, but I think she has great judgment” does that not make me crazy? Judgment matters. Thus, the question of judgment. There are many who would say, “that’s her opinion. She is entitled to it. Why are you discriminating against her beliefs?” I do not disagree with any of those objections. My future wife is entitled to believe whatever she wants; that’s beyond my control. The human conscience is free by nature. Everyone is entitled to their own political beliefs, much in the same way people are free to do as they please, within reason, in America. However, that does not mean that all political opinions are equally good or should be considered equally valid. If two people have contradictory political views, and each believes they are right about what is best for the country, then surely they must be mutually exclusive; someone has to be wrong. Abortion cannot be both moral and immoral at the same time and in the same respect; that’s logically absurd. So she is entitled to her opinion; that does not mean she is right. I could also be wrong, but I think I have developed a sound judgment on an issue, as does she, and therein lies the problem. There are others who would extend this argument to say that I am implying that one should not be friends with people who differ from them politically. That is unequivocally not what I am saying; I have many friends across the political aisle; my whole family is across the political aisle! Politics can play a part in friendship, but determining friendship solely on the basis of politics has many troubling implications: it misses the other dimensions that bring friends together: shared interests, company, and in an Aristotelian sense, someone with whom to strive towards virtue and the Good. The same argument applies to family: family is antecedent to politics, so political differences in the family should not strain family relations. But in dating and creating a household, we are talking about something wholly different. Unlike friendship, dating and marriage are exclusive. Unlike family, who we do not choose, we choose our spouse. And when we select a spouse, that is not like picking with whom we would like to be friends; marriage is something higher than friendship, and it’s much more important. Values trump interests and commonalities; values are the foundation of the household and the family unit. Character matters; if friendship entails the mutual pursuit of virtue, then that is even more important in a marriage.
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This article is part of a series of articles written in celebration of Independence Day in the United States. We celebrate with gratitude the achievements of the Founding Fathers and the wisdom of the Founding Generation, who pledged to each other "our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor," in the pursuit of freedom against the shackles of tyranny. We wish all readers a Happy Independence Day. In the words of President Andrew Jackson: "Our Union: it must be preserved." Happy Birthday America! THOMAS K. SARROUF JR.
Over the course of the past 100 years with the rise of modern American progressivism, there have been many complaints and criticisms of the Founding Fathers and the American government, particularly the Constitutional structure. One might commonly hear criticisms of the electoral college being an “undemocratic system,” or that there are forces in play, like the “top 1%,” who are trying to undermine and erode our “democracy.” “Power to the people” is a common phrase used by many political activists, derived from the John Lennon song of the same name. Because the system was created by the Founders and written into the Constitution, people blame the Founders for creating an inherently unjust and oppressive system; according to these people, America is an inherently bad place, lacking certain values that protect human rights. But why did the Founders structure the Union the way they did? On Independence Day, I think it timely and important to evaluate and recommit to the values of the Founders. The fundamental principle understood by the Founders is the rights of all human beings. The Declaration reads, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” The Founders did not have a specific concept of dignity the way we do today; the term post-dates them. However, they understood that our human tie to the Transcendent, “the Creator,” came with a package of rights; our rights come from a higher source. They understood that human beings were special, and that by virtue of being human, every human, despite individual differences, were created equal. This idea was a radical departure from the common understanding of governance at the time. As Jefferson wrote in that famous last letter of his: “The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.” Contrary to what King George III believed—and what was the common sentiment throughout the entire world—no man had a divine writ to rule over any other man. From that principle of equality comes the principle of consent; government may only be legitimate where consent is given for governance. Because we are all equal, no one can force another to do something without their consent. For the purposes of government, consent must be ongoing, which begets the Constitution, a system of government that ensures perpetual universal consent for government. Why did the Founders choose a representative government? They understood the potential of people to become corrupted by power (e.g. King George III), and needed to impose strict limits on the ability of people to become corrupted. That is why we have a system of checks and balances between the branches of government. Representation allows for continuous consent for government by way of voting, but it also sets a difference between the government and the people. Because the people give consent for government, they are the sovereign. However, they have no political power outside of voting (lobbying, free speech, the rights to bear arms, and protesting are influential and even powerful, but they are not formal mechanisms of political power). This is by design. The Founders wanted to separate the power from the sovereign so that the sovereign could not change the rules of the government like George III did. Hence, America is a republic, not a democracy. The Founding Fathers, knowledgeable of their Classical history and philosophy, knew well that democracy was evil and trended towards corruption. Those who say “power to the people,” do not see the government as being “for the people.” However, as we have seen, this is quite untrue. The Founders created the American government, a federal representative Constitutional republic, based on human anthropology. They saw human beings as having a will and an intellect, equal under God, capable of both tremendous good and terrifying evil, and having a freedom for excellence. From that philosophic foundation, they created a system that would allow us to be ruled by the “better angels of our nature.” Because it is grounded in an understanding of human dignity, the American government is the single greatest nation in human history. So on Independence Day, let us all reflect on just how well the Founders did at making our government, and let us always commit and recommit to those principles gladly and freely. Originally published at the World Youth Alliance, appearing here with slight edits.
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This article is part of a series of articles written in celebration of Independence Day in the United States. We celebrate with gratitude the achievements of the Founding Fathers and the wisdom of the Founding Generation, who pledged to each other "our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor," in the pursuit of freedom against the shackles of tyranny. We wish all readers a Happy Independence Day. In the words of President Andrew Jackson: "Our Union: it must be preserved." Happy Birthday America! HAYDEN G.
Many Americans typically celebrate Independence Day by hosting a cookout, spending the day at the lake, lighting off fireworks, or some combination thereof. These are all fine ways to celebrate the sacrifices our nation’s Founding Fathers made by successfully waging war on the British Empire and thus establishing what is today the United States of America. However, this 4th of July in 2021 has a very different texture than the Independence Days of years past. Many states just recently lifted small-business crippling lockdown restrictions, inflation is slowly eroding what little purchasing power the US dollar has left, and the family is constantly under attack from an ever decaying culture. Young men are suffering from pornography addiction, young women are selling their bodies on social media, and children are being subjected to a pervasive agenda designed to corrupt their minds. Many cities in the United States have seen record levels of violent crime while law enforcement functionally no longer serves as an effective defender of the rule of law. Religiosity is rapidly declining as Christian morality is being stripped away from American society and those who choose to raise their families with such beliefs are relentlessly ostracized in this rapidly deteriorating secular nation. There are objectively many reasons to be apprehensive when forecasting the trajectory of America with conservatives lacking meaningful leadership to mount an effective defense against the impending dystopian situation we find ourselves in. Unfortunately, the Republican Party has proven to be nothing more than controlled opposition and largely ineffectual in using political power to achieve objectives opposed to the dominant degenerate culture. Conservatives in any major American city live in occupied territory with virtually zero chance of ever gaining meaningful influence to counter the war being waged against their values and way of life. Generally speaking many conservatives agree on the core issues facing the nation and spend a great deal of time debating on which reforms they would make or how they would pass laws to counter these problems. This, frankly, is a complete waste of time given the demonstrated weakness, incompetence, and corruption of the Republican Party. I prefer to focus on the things I can personally control and how I can better improve my life given the circumstances. The good news is that practically anyone with the resolve to opt out of the deteriorating culture can do so by improving their lives. A great starting point with improving your physical health is by cutting out toxic substances such as fast food, processed food, seed oils (soybean, sunflower, canola, safflower, corn, etc.), processed sugar, and soft drinks. If you can remove these specific items from your diet, you will not only improve your physical health but also enhance your mental health with an overall improved mood. A good rule I like to use is “If it wasn’t a common food in the early 1900s, you don’t need it”. Grass fed beef, wild-caught seafood, pasture raised eggs, grass fed dairy, fresh fruit, vegetables, potatoes, and sourdough bread is an excellent starting point for basic diet excellence. Ensuring a minimum of 15 minutes of daily sunlight is vitally important for your body to gain exposure to natural Vitamin D. Sustained exercise in the form of a daily jog or a productive hour lifting weights will ensure that you are providing your body with adequate endorphins with the accompanying benefits such as the “runners high”. Sleep is the other critical component along with diet and exercise that cannot be overlooked. Blue light exposure from your phone, laptop, and TV prior to going to bed can adversely impact your body’s ability to achieve deep sleep (REM). Putting your phone on airplane mode prior to laying down will also assist with the potential urge to constantly check it and keep your blue light exposure to a minimum. Drinking a cup of chamomile tea with ½ tbsp of Glycine along with a Zinc (ZMA) supplement approximately 30 minutes prior to going to sleep has proven to be very beneficial in my personal experience. Basic improvements to your diet, exercise routine, and sleep quality will help shape a positive mindset and forge a healthy body which can potentially reduce your reliance on the healthcare system well into old age. There are many other personal suggestions I could list to improve your life such as regularly attending mass/church, reducing social media usage, or wisely investing your money. However, the objective of this article is not to rattle off a checklist based on my personal perspective. My goal is to provide suggestions on how individuals can build a baseline level of optimal physical and mental health to strengthen their agency and resist the efforts by those who control society to subjugate them. Effectively controlling your life and your sphere of influence will ensure that you are not just another mindless drone willfully going along with or facilitating the deliberate decline of American society. On this 4th of July, I encourage you to take the necessary actions to declare your independence from the degenerate American culture, assert control over your domain, and resist the dysfunctional power centers attempting to destroy your way of life.
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I Think I Can!7/4/2021 This article is part of a series of articles written in celebration of Independence Day in the United States. We celebrate with gratitude the achievements of the Founding Fathers and the wisdom of the Founding Generation, who pledged to each other "our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor," in the pursuit of freedom against the shackles of tyranny. We wish all readers a Happy Independence Day. In the words of President Andrew Jackson: "Our Union: it must be preserved." Happy Birthday America! CHARLIE WOLTHER
The “great” outdoors are, by nature, no friend to man. We only require three things for basic survival: food, water, and shelter. As this suggests, the necessity of isolation from the world around us is a common feature of our lives. We live, sleep, work and eat mostly inside. This fact of life seems impervious to technological advancement, if not strengthened by it. Innovation has made it possible to exercise, learn, and, with the internet, stay connected to and informed on most of the planet without leaving our homes. Our safe, predictable homes stand in contrast to the natural world. Just stepping outside in a city puts you at an exponentially greater risk of attack and, if you go far enough from your home, leaves you reliant on others for food and water which you now have to get from stores and restaurants instead of your kitchen. Meanwhile, you can just forget about leaving the city and heading into the wilderness or a national park. There you’ll find no internet, no steady source of food, and the only human presence for miles around is often far away. Everything about unexplored nature should worry any rational human being. Luckily, Americans are uniquely irrational. 80% of Americans live in urban spaces which take up only 3% of the total land area of the US. In a country stretching from the Rockies to the Everglades, a vast amount of open space is left inhabited by a relatively small minority of the population that does not live close together. Large, uninhabited spaces are naturally intimidating to humans, and in other countries they are. Russians seem to have no love for cold Siberia. Brazilians stick to the coast and have avoided the Amazon so much that there are tribes within it who have never contacted the outside world. And yet, come Memorial Day Weekend or July 4, millions of Americans say things like “let’s go to the lake!” or “let’s go camping!” before hopping in their cars and driving to the middle of nowhere like it’s nothing. A friend of mine even told me two days ago that for the holiday weekend she and her family are going to a house with no internet. It would seem Americans have a proclivity for the world beyond their comforts. Evidence of this attraction pervades American culture. Every year, some 3 million Americans visit the 2,200 mile Appalachian trail to hike mountains which once marked the border of the United States because they were so natural a barrier to humans. Thousands even attempt to “thru-hike” the entire trail in one year, choosing of their own volition to live in the woods and carry packs all the way from Georgia to Maine. A minority of Americans may live outside cities, but a majority(62%) of American households have one person who camps at least occasionally. In 1872, even as the American frontier was still very much alive and dangerous, President Ulysses S. Grant signed a law making Yellowstone the first national park in the world. Looking for inspiration, the Hudson River School of American landscape painters chose their country’s roaring rivers, towering mountains, and dark forests. A meaningful life cannot be found solely in survival. Man is at, and prepared to do, his worst when all he has to worry about are food, water, and shelter. It is only while looking beyond these things that he finds love, creativity, and enlightenment. As animals, however, humans are programmed to prioritize their own survival, and many people care only for the basic necessities of their lives. No wonder why, as technology has made it easier to live comfortably, many have spent even more time sequestering themselves in their homes, afraid of the world outside and respecting its intimidating and carefully set boundaries. But not Americans. For 245 years, Americans have done anything but respect the boundaries the world has set out for them. In 1776, they broke their allegiance to the British king and decided to fight for liberty against the world’s foremost power. For decades, Americans strove for humanity and merit in the face of violently enforced discrimination. Americans have, time and time again, looked beyond their homes and their comforts to the mountains and the rivers and deserts and left, against the laws of nature itself, to climb and ford and cross them. This Sunday, as millions of Americans pack up and head out of the cities, camp in the forests, and throw barbecues outside, they will be celebrating the constant American search for meaning beyond. They will be celebrating 245 years of a nation which has never for one second respected the forces which might stop us from finding love, creativity, and enlightenment. They will be celebrating a nation of explorers.
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The Lost Opportunity for Unification5/12/2021 ERIN SPELLMAN
As a member of the Boston College Class of 2021, I find myself, like so many other Seniors, spending time reflecting on my BC experience as we approach graduation. The education I received here at the Heights—academically, socially, spiritually, and philosophically—has truly shaped me in ways that I could never have imagined. As I log into Canvas one last time to submit a final research paper, I realize that this is the time to celebrate and to recognize that which my classmates and I have accomplished during our four years on this beautiful campus. The various events of Senior Week will lead us to the day we could only envision and work towards when we entered campus for the first time as Freshman in the fall of 2017: Boston College’s 144th Commencement. The past four years have brought great division to every aspect of life in America. While we may have differing views about the root causes of such division, it is clear that the one thing we can, in fact, agree on is that this division down party lines very much exists; it is a living, breathing, deep seated division that has dominated much of our college experience, both on and off campus. However divided we may feel politically, the Boston College Class of 2021 graduates do share common ground as we move forward into the world: We have worked diligently for the past four years to earn our degree, we have walked the same steps across a campus we love, we are shaped in the spirit of a Jesuit education, and we are all BC Eagles. What a wonderful opportunity to recognize such unification of the Class of 2021 on Graduation Day. Unfortunately, instead of capitalizing on the common ground of BC’s Class of 2021, BC’s Administration has chosen a highly divisive figure, New York Times columnist David Brooks, to speak at our Commencement. BC’s choice of Brooks is highly suspect given that University President William P. Leahy, S.J. argued that “…our nation must address and resolve social and political differences creating harmful divisions...” in a late January letter to the BC Community. Nothing screams “addressing and resolving division” like a commencement speaker whose headlines state that “Trumpians are having a venomous panic attack” and that “The G.O.P Is Getting Even Worse” or his likening of the January 6th Capital events to the atrocities of 9/11. I wonder how the Republican students and their Republican parents in attendance will feel about a speaker who suggests that “we do face a political crisis in this country, and the Republican Party is the epicenter of that crisis.” While I most certainly support a diverse range of views and a respectful exchange of ideas, the time for such scholarly endeavors has already transpired for us over the past four years. These newly anointed BC alumni and their parents will think twice about future gifting to the University as they recall being subjected to the proselytizing of a highly divisive Brooks. Any reasoning for this decision by BC escapes me. Even Brooks’ own New York Times colleague David Murray stated in a 2017 opinion piece on controversial graduation speakers, “Free and open debate is indeed one of the hallmarks of democracy. But it’s not one of the hallmarks of commencement addresses. This is something I wish college administrators would get through their thick heads.” As I close my time at the Heights, I wish that I had taken the opportunity to suggest a Commencement Speaker candidate that appeals to all, such as the President of Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Peter Slavin, who was at the epicenter of the COVID-19 Pandemic and who led MGH’s emergency response to the Boston Marathon bombing crisis in 2013; or Catherine D’Amato, the President and CEO of the Greater Boston Food Bank, who is combating the dire issue of food insecurity in the Boston area; or Astronaut Christopher Cassidy, who returned last October from his 3rd visit to the Space Station after living for 196 days in outer space. I can only imagine the perspective BC graduates and their parents could have enjoyed together by any of these speakers, unified in the discussion of the greater good of mankind. To current and future Boston College students; I encourage you to stand up for your beliefs and fight for unity on this campus.
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Dear Editorial Board of The Heights, I am Luis Duran and I currently serve as the President of Boston College Republicans. Your article, “To Promote Dialogue, Student Organizations Should Not Invite Prejudiced Speakers,” was recently brought to my attention. In this article, you argued that “Student organizations should not invite discriminatory speakers that ostracize members of the BC community and do not constructively participate in open debate.” With this statement I agree. In fact, I speak on behalf of Boston College Republicans; we agree with this statement. Now I must say that given our level of agreement, I was very shocked to read the numerous accusations that you cast at my organization. In your article, you wrote of “a pattern of hateful and inappropriate speakers,” and you offered two examples of speakers that my organization has invited: Andrew Klavan and Hadley Arkes. Let me tell you about Hadley Arkes: Hadley Arkes is the Edward N. Ney Professor of Jurisprudence and American Institutions at Amherst College. He is also the Founder and Director of the James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights; he is the founder of the Committee for the American Founding. Hadley Arkes has written dozens of books with topics that range from the Constitution to morality. Hadley Arkes is a well-known and respected political scientist and professor. He writes for First Things and does a bi-weekly column for The Catholic Thing. The title of the talk he gave was “Natural Law Challenge,” and his entire talk was about the importance of natural law. Inappropriate you said? Or did you mean to say that in this talk he said something you disagreed with? Hateful? I am sure that you are aware that the term “hateful” is a very subjective term. Why is he hateful according to you? Because he holds an opinion that is different than that of the majority of people at BC? Are those the standards by which you measure hatefulness? If those are your standards, then I am glad to say that we have different standards (something we can afford to do given the subjectivity of your terms). Let me tell you about Andrew Klavan: he is a conservative commentator for The Daily Wire and a novelist. He has written over 30 books and has won the Edgar Allan Poe Award twice. He has a daily podcast where he gives plenty of conservative commentary. He is popular among young conservatives and was a popular choice of a speaker in 2019. The title of his talk was “The Art of Being Free,” and it was mostly about his career as a novelist, the importance of words, and the frequent failure of universities to protect free speech. Inappropriate? You accuse him of being an Islamophobe and thus say that he was hateful and inappropriate. Now I disagree that he is Islamophobic, but that is something that we can debate about. However, there was no room for debate because the moment that your newspaper got wind that he would be coming to campus, you immediately characterized him as Islamophobic. So you shut out the possibility of debate. Had you not done so, the campus dialogue could have been different. Rather than “BC Republicans to invite speaker with history of Islamophobic comments,” the conversation could have been about what Islamophobia actually is, and how it is manifested and experienced. Maybe we would have learned something, and maybe you would have learned something. But we were unable to do this because of your unwise and unjust actions. The impediment to constructive dialogue was not our invitation, but your premature response and accusation. In your article, you also cited some examples of speakers who positively contributed to dialogue and debate on campus. One of these examples was the pro-life talk by Kristan Hawkins in 2019. Later on you also wrote that “Clubs should not invite a guest speaker that can be accused of breaching the peace on campus, and therefore doing more harm than good.” And you proceed to cite Klavan and the protest in response to his talk as examples. I was shocked. Your own newspaper called Hawkins’ talk divisive and she was also met with protests which could be accused of “breaching the peace on campus.” You published an article about the Hawkins talk that read, “some in the student population have found the title hurtful and an attack on feminists and humans.” This same article talks about the event’s posters being ripped down before the talk. A different article that you published reads “In my opinion, the event did not promote “respect and empathy” for middle-class, abled, and heterosexual Catholic white women, let alone those of different(/no) genders, races, ethnicities, sexualities, religions, abilities, and socioeconomic backgrounds.” How can you have criticized a talk as presenting an attack to “feminists and humans” just two years ago, and now present it as an example of a talk that promoted respectful discourse? Hawkins’ talk had a very similar response to that of Klavan; yet you wrote that campus speakers should preserve peace on campus and presented Klavan as disruptive and Hawkins as peaceful. I will not say that you are being opportunistic, I will not criticize you for hypocrisy, and I won’t say that you did not do your research very well, but I am unsure of what else I could say. Further, your article establishes a question and answer session as a prerequisite for promoting dialogue and respectful discourse on campus. Again, I am shocked. Both Klavan and Arkes had lengthy question and answer sessions, and they both answered questions from people who disagreed with them. And these questions were not only welcomed, but encouraged! If you had attended the Arkes talk, you would have noted that the discussion of homosexuality began in the question and answer session. Some of our members disagreed with Arkes and voiced their disagreements, and other disagreements came from non-members. I am not quite certain what the difference is between the talks that you categorized as constructive and those that you categorized as inappropriate and hateful. Again, I will not say that you did not do your research, but it seems to me that you did not do your research. Your article also put weight on the importance of “the right to feel safe at all times on campus.” I think this is important; BC students should feel safe on campus. Yet here you are, making me feel unsafe. I am not exaggerating, nor am I playing a victim card. In 2019, the article that accuses Klavan of Islamophobia (with purposefully distorted evidence and misinformation) has my name literally written all over it. How do you think my peers responded to my very presence after that? You think the undeserved and unjust rejection I encountered after that article made me feel safe? Just the other day, you published an article that called my organization a hate group. Why? Because we think differently than the majority of BC students? That’s not fair. I do not hate anyone and my organization does not hate anyone. And who gives you the authority to decide who is and who isn’t a hate group? Do you think that being unjustly and undeservedly called the leader of a hate group makes me feel safe or welcomed at Boston College? Am I not a student at Boston College? Do I not fall under the umbrella of students which you say must feel safe at all times on campus? The night of the Klavan event, I had to be escorted out of the room by BCPD. The unending and uncivil banging on the walls by protestors heightened the night’s fears. Do you have any idea how unsafe I felt when I saw the hatred with which people were looking at me and addressing me? Unlike myself and the rest of the Executive Board, the people who attended the talk were not escorted out. As they walked out of the room, a number of slurs and other atrocities were yelled at them. Do you think they felt safe? Do you think that the pro-life organization who hosted the Kristan Hawkins talk felt safe when their posters were being torn down? Were they not students who must feel safe at all times? It is funny that in your article, you wrote that during the Klavan protests, the protestors “egged on.” This past fall semester, a group of female students had a Trump flag in their living room which was slightly visible from their window. One night they heard some noise at their door, and when they investigated, they found that their door had been egged. They reported the attack, but asked not to receive publicity because they feared further aggression. Is that what feeling safe looks like? Do you have any idea how humiliating it was for those girls to see the door of their dorm room covered in eggs? What better way to tell someone that they are not welcome on campus? You say that students at Boston College should feel safe at all times. Does that apply to all students or just some? Does that include conservative students as well? Does that include me? Where are your criticisms of the left leaning speakers that trump debate and discourse on campus? Why won’t you criticize the immediate attacks which we receive for our events? Why do you say that students should feel safe at all times and simultaneously make some students feel unsafe? Because we bring speakers that make others feel uncomfortable and unsafe? These speakers present ideas that are uncommon or unseen at Boston College, but not ideas that threaten the safety of others. Klavan’s talk was about free speech, and he only briefly mentioned Islam and not in criticism. The controversy around Klavan started when The Heights assumed possession of absolute truth and gave him the title of Islamophobe. So if you disagree with unproductive controversy, then please check yourselves. Arkes made someone feel unsafe? I will assume that this claim is not jargon and I will respond to it. If Arkes made you feel unsafe, it wasn’t him but the ideas he delivered that made you feel unsafe. What ideas were these? That homosexuality stands opposed to natural law? Well, go ahead and disagree with it. Some of our own members disagreed. We welcome dissent and disagreement. But unsafe? An 81-year-old man on a computer screen made you feel profoundly unsafe? Perhaps this has less to do with what he was saying and more to do with the fact that you, and many in the BC community, do not like hearing ideas that they disagree with. Boston College Republicans can claim that they feel “unsafe” by the multitude of left leaning talks that are held at BC every year. There are literally dozens of talks on critical race theory, the “so-called” failures of capitalism, the abolition of the Second Amendment, environmental policies that all but require a socialist state, and many more every single year. Many members of Boston College Republicans disagree with some of these positions, but I have yet to see any of them claim to feel unsafe or organize a smear campaign against the speakers or the organizations that invite them. We disagree with them, yes; but we don’t say that these talks make us unsafe just because we disagree with them. As such, it is not so evident to me that we are contributing to the division on campus. Quite the contrary, your divisive language and intolerance of conservative opinions do much more to increase the political divide on campus than we do. There are reasons for some BC students to feel unsafe at BC, and this is wrong and should be addressed. But us inviting certain speakers is not one of these reasons any more than other student organizations inviting left-leaning speakers is one of those reasons, especially when these speakers are not attacking any students at Boston College. And perhaps I am underestimating you, but I think it is necessary to explain that diverse opinions do not constitute an attack or a threat to the safety of any student. While your newspaper has partaken in the task of smearing my organization, BCR has been working to promote the very dialogue that you speak about. In the past two years, we have had five different speakers, and we would have had more if the pandemic had not occurred. One of these speakers was Professor of Political Science at Boston College, Peter Skerry. In his talk, titled “The Other Side of Diversity,” he argued that “we’ve put African Americans at a disadvantage as a result of this emphasis on diversity,” and that America has a certain obligation to African Americans that it does not have to other minorities. The Heights published an article about this talk, so you were at least aware of this. We had Professor Peter Kreeft, of Boston College’s Philosophy department, give a talk on the pro-life position. We had Dr. Carol M. Swain give a talk titled “The Privilege of Opportunity: A Conversation with Carol Swain,” in which she talked about her life and the equality of opportunity that people have in America. And for your information, they all had lengthy question and answer sessions. The only talks that have sparked unproductive controversy have been those that you have endeavored to smear. All of the speakers we invite are nothing but respectful to students, and they have all had question and answer sessions. You say that “students bear the responsibility of maintaining ongoing and respectful conversations on campus.” Well that is exactly what we have done. In fact, we have created an opportunity for more respectful conversations on campus. But you also bear a responsibility to provide unbiased news and to give everyone a fair hearing. Your repeated discrimination against us, your intolerance of our views, and your ignorance of our opinions show that you either have utter contempt for your responsibility as a newspaper, or you are just really bad at living up to your responsibilities. Before the pandemic, Boston College Republicans and Boston College Democrats had agreed to co-host a field day. One can hope that some friendship and productive conversations would have come from this event. This fall, Boston College Republicans and Boston College Democrats collaborated with the Network of Enlightened Women at Boston College on an event called ElectHer. The event was intended to provide women who were considering a career in politics with resources to pursue such careers. Boston College Republicans meet weekly to discuss current events, debate about political theory issues, and discuss new policies in Massachusetts and America as a whole. We help our members network. We speak to the administration on behalf of our members. Our organization serves as a means to make friendships. Many of our members organize social events. We held the Freedom Convocation, where we gave a platform for conservative students to exchange ideas and viewpoints with each other. For all intents and purposes, we are a regular student organization. But for some odd reason the independent newspaper at Boston College chooses to paint us as a “hate group.” We are not a hate group, our invitations of Klavan and Arkes were not inherently wrong or oppressive, we have never threatened the safety of anyone, and The Heights does not have the authority to decide what should and should not be allowed on campus. Once again, I will not say that your newspaper is but a shadow of journalism. I won’t say that The Heights is as biased as they come. I won’t say that The Heights is dishonest for not owning up to this bias. And most importantly, I will never in my life say that your irresponsible and unethical journalism practices are what make The Heights a lousy excuse of a newspaper and what sparks unproductive controversy. Saying these things would not be nice, and I am a nice person. So I refrain. What I will ask of you is that you start doing your part to ensure that all students at Boston College feel safe and welcomed on campus. And I humbly ask that you abandon this odd infatuation you have with my organization. A fellow Eagle, Luis Duran
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MORGAN HUNT
On Monday, March 29, Boston College Republicans hosted Amherst College Professor emeritus Hadley Arkes for a Zoom lecture on Natural Law and traditional morality. Professor Arkes is a highly respected academic, a student of Leo Strauss, and the founder of the James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights and the American Founding. It was an engaging talk, in which Professor Arkes laid down the philosophical and historical foundations of Natural Law, elaborated on its implications, and took many questions from the audience The Wednesday following, BC Heights published a news piece by Victor Stefanescu about Professor Arkes’ lecture, entitled “Arkes Denounces Same-Sex Marriage, Abortion At BC Republicans Event.” This “news” article did not even attempt to report on the event in an unbiased manner. Stefanescu carefully picked and chose select quotations of Arkes in an attempt to smear not only the event, but Professor Arkes and our organization. The article focused on his opposition to homosexuality, his backing of former President Donald Trump, and his admission that he probably “offended everybody” at the event. It also falsely claims that Arkes promoted conversion therapy. The article neglected to summarize Arkes’ arguments for the Natural Law—the entire focus of the event—proving that it was written to provoke emotional sentiments in those who didn’t attend the lecture and would likely take offense with Arkes’ viewpoints. Stefanescu additionally failed to place Arkes’ quotes in the proper context of his arguments. A week and a half later, on April 11, BC Heights published an opinion piece by Scott Baker called “A Message to Prospective Students: Boston College Is Still Homophobic.” In this article, Baker references us with regard to Arkes’ talk: “On March 29, BC College Republicans hosted notorious homophobe and transphobe Hadley Arkes, who gave a lecture that promoted conversion therapy, argued that homosexuality is a choice, and compared homosexuality to drug use and prostitution. At this point, after hosting a white supremacist last year, BC College Republicans should be considered a hate group and not an officially sanctioned student organization with University funding.” There are so many things deeply wrong and pernicious about this passage. Like Stefanescu’s news article, this opinion column completely ignores the focus of Professor Arkes’ talk, which was first and foremost a defense of the Natural Law. It also slanderously misrepresents what Arkes said during the lecture. Arkes did not “promote conversion therapy” at any time. He simply referenced cases in which “therapy and conversion” had led people to no longer consider themselves homosexual. Neither did he compare homosexuality to drug use and prostitution; he brought up the latter two as analogies to make an argument about bodily autonomy and consent. In addition, Baker falsely accuses a previous guest of BC Republicans, Andrew Klavan, of being a “white supremacist.” Instead of challenging Arkes’ or Klavan’s beliefs, which he evidently doesn’t agree with, Baker uses ad hominem attacks and slanders to charge Arkes, Klavan, and our organization with spreading “homophobia,” “white supremacy,” and “hate”. We at Boston College Republicans do not tolerate such false attacks. If Scott Baker had actually gone to our event, he would’ve found Professor Arkes more than willing to respond to questions in the Q&A and engage in debate with those attending. Additionally, he would’ve found Professor Arkes and our organization to be far less “hateful”, and far more tolerant and welcoming, than he believes. Baker could have challenged the Professor’s arguments real-time in a healthy academic debate, but instead chose to slander a well respected academic and the organization which hosted him in a disrespectful and flawed opinion column. It is equally despicable that Scott Baker would write a hit piece calling the BC Administration, and the school as a whole, “homophobic.” Such a polemic displays a level of arrogance and disrespect unbecoming of a Boston College student. If one actually wanted to convince the administration to change their views on establishing an LGBTQ resource center, etc., a more civil and polite column would be significantly more effective. Ironically, I personally agree with Baker’s views on homosexuality and gay marriage. I support gay marriage and, while I believe in the Natural Law, I don’t find homosexual love and attraction to be inherently bad. I knew going into the event that I would disagree with Professor Arkes’ views on homosexuality. Yet unlike Baker, I believe in academic debate and the lively engagement of ideas with which I disagree. In fact, I decided to challenge Professor Arkes in the Q&A portion of his talk. I laid down my case for gay marriage, and he laid down his case against it. We debated the issue back and forth for five or so minutes. It was such an interesting conversation that many people talked to me about it after the event had ended. Some agreed with me on the issue, some didn’t, but most people remarked that I had brought up some good points in defense of homosexuality and gay marriage. That is how one must approach controversial issues on a college campus. It should be how all those in favor of gay marriage approach the issue at Boston College. BC Republicans’ guest speakers always hold Q&A sections where all questions and challenges are welcome. In addition, one may just find that they learn something from our guest speakers, all of whom are highly regarded in their fields. It’s also important to consider that Arkes’ views on homosexual activity, that it is immoral and should be discouraged, are not extremist beliefs well outside the acceptable range of public discourse. Just 13 years ago, both major political candidates for President did not support gay marriage. The Catholic Church, the largest church in the world, does not bless homosexual marriage. The common moral and political arguments against homosexuality and gay marriage are not motivated by bias, but instead by religious faith, a desire for sexual purity, the impulse to incentivize procreation, etc. One can disagree with those arguments, as I do, and still recognize there is nothing extreme, evil, uncommon, or unacceptable about them. The act of opposing homosexual activity and gay marriage is not “homophobic” as Baker infers. A person is homophobic when they treat someone with disdain or disrespect simply because of their homosexuality. Too often the disapproval of homosexual activity is equated with the hatred of homosexual individuals. This is logically inconsistent. It is very possible for a person to disapprove of the sexual and romantic decisions of a gay man without hating their very existence. It is even possible for a homosexual individual to oppose gay marriage on religious, moral, or political grounds. Professor Arkes remarked in his lecture that he has homosexual friends who are opposed to the legalization of such an institution. It would be very strange, and quite nasty, to call that subset of the gay community “homophobic.” Put simply, homosexuality is an issue that should be debated on a college campus. There are many reasonable people on both sides of this important debate. I’m glad Professor Arkes came to campus, mainly because of his excellent argument for the Natural Law, but also because his visit allowed this discussion to happen. Professor Hadley Arkes, on April 6th, wrote about his virtual visit to BC in The Catholic Thing, which is well worth reading. To hear the actual claims Arkes made in his talk, don’t read the false and slanderous articles in The Heights. Rather, inquire with Tom Sarrouf (at [email protected]) to get your hands on a recording of the lecture.
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Are Libertarians Conservative?4/11/2021 THOMAS K. SARROUF, JR.
Last week was a great week for the Boston College Republicans. On Monday, Professor Hadley Arkes delivered a speech to the club over Zoom. It was a spectacular event. During the Q&A, someone asked about Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) and the conservative-libertarian debate on the Right. The next day, the club got together for a political theory discussion on that same topic. There was great debate back and forth, and I found the discussion to be rich with intellectual content; in my opinion, it was the best political theory discussion we have had in my time with the club. While the subject is still fresh, I want to chime in and bring in some of what Prof. Arkes said on Monday. I do think libertarians are conservative. I also think libertarianism fails as a political philosophy. I am not going to defend that premise in this article (for my refutation of the philosophy, read here). But I do not think that conservatism fails as a political philosophy, neither in theory nor in practice. So why do I think libertarians are conservative if I think their philosophy is insufficient? It is because libertarianism collapses into conservatism. First, it will be helpful to elucidate the difference between a liberal and a conservative, so we can determine which position libertarianism collapses into. The difference, so it seems to me, is regarding the role of pleasure and pain. Conservatives, drawing upon Aristotle, recognize that pleasure and pain are part of life. However, it was not until modern times that the subject of pleasure and pain was seriously considered essential to a political anthropology; only the Ancient Epicureans actually centered their philosophy around the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Modern “classical liberals” like John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham, and John Locke, among many others, also treated pleasure and pain as essential; Mill specifically focused on the difference between “higher” pleasures and “lower” pleasures, namely the pleasures of the mind versus the pleasures of the flesh. Even so, Mill’s hedonism was what set him as a liberal, albeit in the “classical” sense. Unlike what some people believe, conservatives are not anti-pleasure per se, it’s just that we harken back to the Ancient understanding of how pleasure should play into our lives. Pleasure is a byproduct of an act, not the telos of the act itself. For an example, let’s use a “cradle argument” that was often debated between the Stoic philosophers and the Epicureans. A newborn baby is crying. Why is the baby crying according to each philosopher? The Epicurean says that the baby is crying because of some pain or some lack of pleasure. The Stoic responds and says that the baby is crying because she is hungry, and is lacking in health, which is a state of being; for the Stoic, what matters is oikeiosis, that innate knowledge of what is beneficial for the preservation of one’s constitution. The baby knows that she is hungry, and that her hunger is indicative of a lack of health, and therefore she is crying out to be nourished. Who is right, the Stoic or the Epicurean? Let’s find out. We will give the baby a morphine drip so that the pain goes away; if the Epicurean is right, in the absence of pain, the baby will be fine. The baby is shot up with morphine, and stops crying. It worked! Then the baby dies from starvation. Oh no! What’s the lesson? If you assign intrinsic value to pleasure, not only will you not get it in the long-term, but you will lose the ability to get it long-term (because you will be dead like the baby). We all intuitively know this truth: a life well-lived will be full of pleasure, but not because we seek the pleasure, but rather the goodness that pleasure happens to be a byproduct of. About this enough has been said. What is the conservative summum bonum? I take the line from that old Baltimore catechism: “to love and serve God in this life so that I might be happy with Him in the next.” Likewise, Aristotle posits that it is happiness, the highest happiness being homoiosis theoi: “to think the thoughts of the gods before them.” How do we do that? By pursuing virtue, or doing what one ought to do. It is a moralist position. There are many other differences between the core of the liberal philosophy and the conservative philosophy, but the pleasure-virtue difference is something quite important. Now, from Mill’s statements in Utilitarianism about the higher and lower pleasures might make him seem as if he is a liberal, and in the history of philosophy, he would be considered to be one. However, as Arkes pointed out in his speech, “the problem for the libertarians is that they haven’t quite grasped the notion that libertarianism is a moral position.” Libertarians are moralists! Just think about what they say: “The government ought not legislate morality; it is wrong for the government to legislate morality; the government ought not limit my autonomy to do what I want to do with my own free choice so long as I do not hurt anyone else.” These are clearly moral claims, and they represent the core of the libertarian position. The problem lies in the fact that they believe that the government ought not legislate morality. It misunderstands this key point: all laws legislate some morality, even something as seemingly banal as which side of the road people drive on; if no law is posited on that point, people will die. Indeed, to create a law, one must make the moral argument that we ought to have such a law. And so the error in the libertarian argument is that the conclusion of that argument is to seek the obfuscation of all moral claims and instantiations of morality in law and society, even though they begin from a premise that is moral; in short, it is a contradiction. But the moralist starting point is undoubtedly true, so the conclusion must be false, which means that the libertarian moralism ought to collapse into conservatism. That’s the theoretical argument. There is also a practical argument. Arkes said another thing on Monday: "The main point I convey is that the Republican Party really is not shattered or in disarray. It’s in very good condition, because the people in the country have just a clear sense of who the opposition is. As an administration and Congress of the Left extend the powers of the government, in a way that is destructive of the economy and the families, so if people recoil from this new surge of the power of the government, they know exactly who the opposition is, and the party is gifted with so much talent right now, and rising stars." This is indeed true. The libertarian impulse is anti-government, so as the Biden administration and the modern Left continue to grab power, especially in light of continued restrictions under the pretext of the COVID pandemic, any serious libertarian will find themselves turning to ally themselves with the Right. And all the better. Conservatism has long been described as a “big tent,” and we welcome libertarians to engage with us in the tent over the battle for ideas. I have spent the duration of this article asking if libertarians can be called conservative, assuming conservatives are the paradigmatic gold standard by which to judge all other ideologies. But I will conclude with a piece of praise for libertarians, which is that they have something to remind conservatives. In fact, they remind us about something so central to our own beliefs: that there are moral truths beyond the positive law, and that it conforms to a natural law that we can know by our reason, and that the natural law discovered by us teaches us how we ought to act in accord with virtue to achieve true happiness. Arkes said a third thing on Monday: “[Libertarianism] is a good disposition; it’s pretty sound. It takes the point that we have a claim to all dimensions of our freedom, and the burden lies with the government to justify its restraints on any one of those things.” That is not to say that there can be no principled ground for justification of restraining liberty; the liberal and the conservative both hold that there is ground for doing so, though we disagree when it is appropriate to do so. However, the libertarian recognizes and reminds us conservatives that we must be careful when restricting the natural rights that are intrinsic to our existence as persons.
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ERIN SPELLMAN
In the wake of the “Me Too” movement, a growing number of women have come forth to accuse New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) of sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior, prompting many calls for an investigation and the Governor’s resignation. To date, eight different women have courageously shared their stories of Cuomo’s unsolicited kissing, touching, and abhorrent behavior. Yet, the Democratic Party, the party that has attempted to lay claim to advocating for survivors and sexual harassment or violence, has dug in their heels to protect Cuomo, and to discredit and dismiss the allegations by these women. While we must continue to shed light on this growing scandal with a full investigation of these allegations, we must not allow the liberal media to ignore the elephant in the room: the New York nursing home scandal. After portraying Cuomo as the heroic figure to emerge from the pandemic, the media has continuously ignored his administration’s deadly nursing home policy. On March 25, 2020, Cuomo’s Health Department issued a mandate which required nursing home facilities to not turn away patients who were COVID-positive. Even though an association that represents medical directors warned against this, the state Department of Health, in conjunction with the Greater New York Hospital Association, the non-profit hospital association, pushed this mandate forward. As a result, nursing homes were unable to appropriately prepare to accommodate those who had tested positive, and hospitalizations and deaths in New York spiked. By February, 2021, 15,000 patients in nursing homes had died of COVID-19 . This staggering number of nursing home deaths was only revealed finally after the Cuomo administration was forced to acknowledge that they had deliberately reported an inaccurate and widely deflated number of 9,000 deaths. Michael Kraus claims that he and many of the nursing home executors in New York were “petrified, but they were more petrified of the Department of Health… once it was shot down, I never spoke about it again” after the March 25th order. Kraus stated that once his concerns about placing COVID-19 positive patients in residence with our most vulnerable citizens, the elderly, were shot down, “I never spoke about it again”. But why did Cuomo continue to enforce his Executive Order mandating New York’s nursing homes to accept COVID-19 positive patients when the numbers began to reflect that this was, in fact, a deadly policy? The Cuomo Administration has stated that their reasoning for enforcing this policy was concerns about hospital capacity. However, this reasoning is not sound. The emergency hospitals at the Javits Center and the USNS Comfort were supposed to serve as overflow hospitals and sat nearly empty in March and April of last year. The story of the most probable reason for Governor Andrew Cuomo’s deadly decision begins in 2018 when he received a generous donation of $1.25 million dollars from the Greater New York Hospital Association. In early January of 2020, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced a 1% drop in reimbursements that New York’s health care providers receive for government-funded Medicaid healthcare programs in order to reduce the state’s budget. It is very likely that hospitals and nursing homes were losing tremendous amounts of money or were barely breaking even at the onslaught of the pandemic. At this time, Cuomo updated the annual budget bill to create corporate immunity for healthcare facilities and officials in the healthcare industry. Since nursing homes work with thin profit margins and have been undercut by Medicaid reductions, they have been using their corporate immunity status to save their businesses. New York is not the only state that has enacted immunity to the healthcare industry. All of the 19 states that had enacted similar protections, including New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, prove to have the highest number of deaths in nursing homes. According to Congressman Ron Kim (D-NY), “people are 7.5 times more likely to die from COVID-19 in states with corporate legal immunity.” Without a doubt, Cuomo’s sexual harassment allegations deserve investigation and he deserves to be condemned for these actions, if proven to be true. However, the governor’s falsification of data and favors to corporate donors—which resulted in 15,000 deaths—should also be condemned. The majority of the media is only focusing on Cuomo’s sexual harassment claims and one must hope that the eight brave women that have come forth are being used as pawns in the political game of chess to cover up the nursing home scandal. This week marks the one-year anniversary of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s deadly COVID-19 nursing home mandate. He must be held responsible for his corrupt actions that resulted in so many deaths of our most vulnerable and devastated thousands of families forever.
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OPAL POLYNICE
Possibly one of the most bizarre events to emerge from Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court Justice hearings was the hexing of Kavanaugh, organized by Catland’s Books in Brooklyn, New York. The event, which was also streamed online, was attended by dozens. While they withheld from publicizing the contents of the spell they used to hex Justice Kavanaugh, organizer and co-founder Dakota Braccielle told the BBC that the hex was “aimed at exposing Brett Kavanaugh for what he truly is, to cause him harm and see him undone.” This was not the bookstore’s first time hosting an event of this kind. The previous year, they organized three hexing rituals designed to target President Trump, under similar intentions, with tickets reportedly selling out at each event according to owners. Many found this strange, and even amusing, as pictures of witches hexing Kavanaugh quickly circulated around social media. But it is only affirmation that occultic practices have regained salience in pop-culture. Why is it that, despite a declining religious population, religion never seems to die? In fact, data suggests that the dying Christian population is only being replaced by pagan practicing religions. The occult seems to be a trend that always dies and re-emerges every generation or so. Perhaps it is our natural human curiosity that inclines us to explore spiritual practices, leading it to be always rediscovered, rebranded, and returned for another generation to utilize. In order to explain this phenomenon, some theologians have offered an explanation of natural law, which I think some readers might find useful. Natural law is a philosophy that has been formulated to explain the rule of conduct intuitive in all human beings. There is no specific date of progression for this philosophical thought, though we know it was the subject of much consideration for the Greek philosopher Aristotle, and later popularized by the Catholic theologian St. Thomas Aquinas. The essence of the natural law is that there are manifested moral truths which direct the reason of rational creatures and which every rational creature is capable of accessing, permitted they have the full use of their intellectual faculties. We know, for example, that lying, cheating, stealing, killing, and other similar acts are fundamentally wrong. We know them to be wrong because our reason can distinguish that these are harmful acts which cause injury to other persons. Because we are sentimental beings— meaning we are capable of registering and reflecting on emotional experiences in complex and multifaceted ways— we are capable of comprehending the pain of other creatures and ourselves, and coming to the conclusion that pain is a disordered state we are not comfortable existing in. Discourse on natural law gets incredibly convoluted and complicated, and so for the sake of clarity, I will limit our definition to what we have described above. The concept of natural law may help to explain why human beings are inclined to conceive or internalize a belief system; we are literally wired to. If you are skeptical of such a characteristic existing preternaturally in all rational beings, I also took the liberty of defending this concept scientifically. In his article “Do Humans Have A ‘Religious Instinct?”, Brandon Ambrosino explores the rationale behind the conception and proliferation of religion in an attempt to understand the basic primal necessity humans have for a system that organizes and simplifies complex ideas in more accessible ways. In it, he observes what leading neuroscientist Andrew Newberg says about the human brain. Newberg says that “If you contemplate God long enough, something surprising happens in the brain. Neural functioning begins to change. Different circuits become activated, while others become deactivated. New dendrites are formed, new synaptic connections are made, and the brain becomes more sensitive to subtle realms of experience. Perceptions alter, beliefs begin to change, and if God has meaning for you, then God becomes neurologically real.” (qtd. How God Changes Your Brain). Further, the neurologist says that “[religious experiences] satisfy two basic functions of the brain: self-maintenance (“How do we survive as individuals and as a species?”) and self-transcendence (“How do we continue to evolve and change ourselves as people?”).” In other words, there is a biological necessity for religion, or at least similarly organized institutions. Not only normative truths indicate inherent religiosity, but empirical evidence suggests a similar conclusion: we are wired to be spiritual beings. So, why is this important? Is this an op-ed trying to get you to go to church? Not necessarily. This is important because, despite a decline in populations that identify as Christian, religious practices themselves have not declined in the same way. In the absence of Christianity, other spiritual practices have occupied the vacuum left by organized religion. Take, for example, the Satanic Panic. In the 60s and 70s, an explosion of occultic practices resurfaced and made their way into mainstream media to be consumed by a rebellious younger generation and become the face of the ‘counterculture’. A proliferation of rock bands and music revived occultic obsession, with bands such as the Rolling Stones, AC DC, Led Zeppelin, Floyd Pink, and others famously intertwining their arts with occult symbolism and ritualism. Even the Beatles made uncanny references to occult figures such as magician and occultist Aleister Crowley, infamously called “The Wickedest Man in the World.” Movies such as “Rosemary’s Baby”, “The Exorcist”, and “The Amityville Horror” became massively popular, and around the same time we witnessed a rise in the popularity of Eastern meditative practices such as yoga, mindfulness, reiki, new thought, as well as western esotericism. Average millennials have a hard time connecting with Christian doctrines, many of which they feel uphold patriarchal and heteronormative tenets and harmful constructions of gender roles. In turn, many have turned to New Age practices, which Burton describes in her article “The Rise of Progressive Occultism” as “a variety of anti-authoritarian spiritual practices that stressed the primacy of the self, the power of intuition, the untrustworthiness of orthodox institutions, and the spiritual potential of the ‘forgotten’—often women.” These types of practices are more accessible for a generation looking to include the intersectionality of race, gender, and sex in a more inclusive framework that at once allows them to express their identity and feel empowered by inclusive belief systems. It is no surprise, then, that as Western-normative religions decrease in popularity, and as generational changes in behavior accommodate a more liberal philosophy, we see likewise a shift in religious practices that affirm one’s identity and reinforce one’s moral convictions. As observed by many, fascination with eccentric spiritual devotions was a direct result of the rejection of Christianity. The rejection of institutionalized religion did not mean humans evolved past the need for religious experience. The rise of Satanism, Wicca, witchcraft, and other similar categorically defined ‘others’ has grown exponentially, especially since the early 2000s. The Satanic Temple, founded in 2012 by Lucien Greaves and Malcolm Jarry, has increased its membership from a few dozen to tens of thousands, with the organization having chapters nationwide. In her documentary Hail Satan?, director Penny Lane interviews temple directors and coordinators who explain that the Temple is not an organization dedicated to the worship of Satan, unlike the Church of Satan founded by Anton Levay; it is a self-described non-theistic religion that contains all the conditions of a ‘religion’ while distancing itself from any particular practice. Lane herself attributes the popularity of the Temple to the fact that “Religion provides a way of healing, meaning, and organization and narrative, coherent and community and ethical kind of standards or ways we consider difficult problems of how to live your life, that’s heavy stuff. So when you lose religion, you get a whole lot of people like myself who find themselves casting about for that kind of organizing principle.” Wiccanism similarly has grown in membership from 8,000 in 1998 to 340,000 in 2008, and again to 1.4 million in 2014. It is important to note that these figures, gathered by the Pew Research Religious Landscape study, only documented those who identified as Wiccan or pagan, and not necessarily all who ascribe to non-Christian, non-theistic, or polytheistic religions. The numbers may be even higher than reflected here. In fact, studies would suggest that those who dabble in the occult don’t always formally identify themselves as witches. There is increasing interest among millennials who dabble frequently in a mix of eastern and indigineous practices while not ascribing to any particular group. From yoga, to tarot card readings, to reiki, to crystals; interest in practices with mystical properties is trending with young adults. In September of 2018, Sephora attempted to sell a $42 ‘witch starter-kit’ to capitalize off the growing market, though backlash from actual witches forced them to pull their product before even leaving shelves. And then there are plenty of witches who sell their services, such as Juliet Diaz who lives in New Jersey. In an interview with The Atlantic, Diaz describes the work she does as a witch, which includes but is not limited to, doing magic on behalf of others who seek wealth and power but do not know how to perform the rituals themselves. Her most popular service is a $45 ritual for ‘manifesting intentions.’ She reportedly performs up to 100 candle services each month and sells out within a day of promoting her service. She can help manifest things such as job promotions, business startups, wedding proposals, and court wins. As young people grow more frustrated with institutional religion and become more distrustful of doctrinal teaching, they turn to more flexible spiritual practices that they can mix-and-match according to their needs, and prefer quick-fixes rather than relying on a God-like figure to solve their problems. Occult practices have also come to be a form of resistance for many who feel it is an effective way to fight against an ‘oppressive system’, a movement that has been termed ‘progressive occultism’. Burton mentions in her article that “The scholars Joshua Landry and Michael Saler call this [quintessential] phenomenon ‘re-enchantment.’ In their 2009 book “The Re-Enchantment of the World: Secular Magic in a Rational Age,” they argue that we are seeing a resurgence in seemingly atheistic spaces of ‘a variety of secular and conscious strategies for re-enchantment, held together by their common aim of filling a God-shaped void.’ The contemporary millennial Left, increasingly alienated from a Christianity it sees as repressive, outmoded, and downright abusive, has used the language, the imagery, and the rituals of modern occultism to re-enchant its seeming secularism.” And that’s the point: at the root of it all, we are spiritual creatures searching for ways to rationalize the world around us. With Christianity on the decline, it has not made us any less spiritual, our attention has merely shifted to other mystical phenomena to satisfy our compulsion for ritual behavior. We are finite beings made with a capacity for the infinite; we look for a higher being to satisfy our natural desire for peace and stability, and to direct our conscience. This was, in earlier times, fulfilled by Christianity, but with an influx of alternative devotions, is steadily being replaced by the occult.
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THOMAS K. SARROUF, JR.
2020 was the most consequential set of elections in U.S. history, with the only exceptions being 1788 (the first one), and 1860, which saw our great nation divide in an unprecedented (and God willing, never to be repeated) way: secession and bloody civil war. Last year marked not only the most contested presidential election in American history, but also the most significant Senate run-off elections to date. This year, election season is early: Boston College Republicans is holding its elections this week for the upcoming school year. And this year, I am announcing my candidacy for President of Boston College Republicans for the 2021-2022 academic year. For those who are unaware of my experience with this club, I will briefly share. I have been a loyal member of College Republicans for the past three years. I was involved with BCR right away, and participated in a debate against the College Democrats during my freshman fall; despite what The Heights says, we walloped them, and in one case, they walloped themselves. More recently, it has been my honor to serve as the Chief of Staff this year, where I have led the reading group; secured Hadley Arkes to come speak to the club in a couple of weeks; co-authored the condemnation of the online COVID reporting system; led meetings; have written many of the founding documents and articles for the new conservative newspaper, The Free Press, and led the charge in The Free Press to fight against the sham impeachment of UGBC President Christian Guma. But that is what I have done. What I plan to do next year is a much taller order, but one I am fully equipped and eager to fulfill. I have long been a family man. If the individual is the nucleus of Western civilization, then the family is the cell—the fundamental unit of society. I want College Republicans to grow into a conservative family. We have long been the party of the “big tent,” where we tolerate diverse and disagreeing views within our own movement; in the aftermath of the abomination that occurred in the U.S. Capitol last month, the party stands split over the path forward. But I would like to say that you are all brothers and sisters regardless of where you stand on that. I feel like I know almost everyone in the club, at least as well as I possibly could over Zoom, but what I mean by family is a genuine community, rooted in shared values, principles, and a shared vision of the future. To that end, I propose a reincarnation of the social groups, which we have tried in the past, to no avail. But in the name of solidarity, we must come together and back each other the way a family does. I believe strongly that together, we can make it work, and I intend to do just that. As I make this bid for the Presidency, I think about my friends. I have always been gung ho on this campus that I am a conservative Republican; in classrooms, on social media, and everywhere in between, I will chime in and give an opinion during a political discussion, the personal consequences be damned. Just this past summer, as the online public square was being weaponized by progressives to malign Republicans and American patriots who are rightly proud of our rich heritage, I shared my views and arguments at length against them. I received much praise by friends who are conservative, but dare not share their views. We all know these people: the meek conservative who loves the country and wants to continue our tradition of building upon our Republic, but does not want to lose friends, be censured by classmates, or run the risk of having a reduced grade for holding different views than their professor. These claims are perhaps over exaggerated, but can you blame them for not wanting to risk it? I do not blame anyone for keeping their mouth shut; not everyone has the luxury to not care what people think of their political affiliation. But this way of being? IT ENDS NOW. The Left claims to want unity, healing, truth, and reconciliation, but we will never have any of those things if one side is politically repressed; that will only breed resentment. It ends now. So we will create a conservative family, one that backs each other up when the scrutiny is strong against us. We will stand up straight with our shoulders back, firm in our convictions, confident in the efficacy and rightness of our beliefs. If elected, my administration will hold to this principle: an attack against one of us is an attack against all of us, and I will bring the full force of Boston College Republicans to fight back against repression of right-wing views. But we will do even more than this. From this family will emerge a sweeping conservative movement that takes the campus by storm. We have read Yuval Levin; we have a systematic and mature way of conceptualizing and participating in the campus culture war; and it is about damn time to enter forthright into the marketplace of ideas. Our movement will take the activist administrators to task for employing, aiding, and abetting the leftist pariah that consumes this great University. We will push back (figuratively) against professors who are receptacles of radicalism, pumping us up with intellectual poison and pseudo-moralistic sophistries; they are making us all dumber, and we deserve better. And we will stand up in front of our peers and engage strongly, disagree vociferously, and advocate for a University, and an America we can proudly believe in. How will we achieve this lofty goal? We will erect tables on the campus lawns and invite people to dialogue, “change my mind” style. We will continue to discuss amongst ourselves the values and policies that will help America remain at the forefront of human civilization, and then spread those messages throughout the campus. We will disseminate our young newspaper, The Free Press, throughout the campus, spreading our cherished values and bright ideas. We will bring an onslaught of speakers to this campus; they can protest, kick, scream, chant ludicrous slanders and epithets at us, but if we persist—and we will persist—our classmates will have no choice but to concede: we exist. If they protest everything, they end up protesting nothing. And it is my intention to form a strong network of all of the conservative groups on campus, and with our combined efforts, we will force the University to protect us from harassment, censorship, and reprisal, including the heinous politically motivated hate crime that occurred to one of our own this past Fall, the infamous “egg” incident. Students should not be subject to political persecution, and school rules and policies must be uniformly enforced on this campus. I will do everything in my power, using the full institutional power of Boston College Republicans, to make sure this happens, and together, we will “secure the Blessings of Liberty for ourselves and our Posterity.” Like I said, this way of being ends now. But we also must think of the bigger picture. This University does not exist in a vacuum. We are a small node in a network that has a reach far and wide throughout the country, the West, and the wider world. As Charles Malik writes: “What is at stake is not this or that political interest, nor this or that government, nor even the security of the United States alone; what is at stake is the totality of Western civilization with its tested and wonderful values which have been cumulatively handed down for thousands of years. One can no longer think of himself or his interests or his country or his party or this or that superficial improvement or the span of a year or two when this is the issue.” My friends, this is the issue: our campus issues are both reflections and premonitions of what is and will be when we leave this beautiful campus. The whole of Western civilization has been infiltrated by a fifth column of ideas and actors that are committing treason against the Western heritage; these are the ideas we see in the lecture halls of our University, the frames of the arguments of the pundits on TV, and in the language and beliefs of many philosophers, public intellectuals, and “community organizers.” We are being branded as radicals for being conservative. AOC and others are pushing for making “Trump supporter lists.” That isn’t fascistic at all! Robert Reich and Liz Warren, backed by NPR and other media organizations, are pushing “truth and reconciliation councils” to rehash the past 4 years, outing every Trump supporter, and “seeking the truth” about his wrongs and all of his “enablers.” And in the aftermath of an attempted coup that threatened the Constitution that we cherish, the same powers that be wrongly spread the scope of their scorn to all conservatives, giving us no out, stoking the same tensions that they accuse Trump of stoking, which will lead to our collective ruin. My friends, we are staring into the void. We are looking at political repression the likes of which we have never seen; they are so radical that they are trying to shut the Overton window on mainstream conservatism! That’s unacceptable, and we have to be a part of the solution to that on a wider scale. The fight for the campus is more than just the campus. We are fighting for the future of this country. And the fight for this country is about stopping the assault on the entire Western Spirit of Being. Think about our classmates; they are growing increasingly stupid, opposed to free speech and free expression for ideas with which they disagree, increasingly in favor of socialism, opposed to the West, opposed to Thanksgiving, in need of safe spaces, soft, believing in infinitely evolving conceptions of gender. They impeached Christian Guma over a typo! Simply put, our peers, who I sincerely believe mean well, are learning to attack Truth itself. That’s where we are headed, and it’s all being led by an activist administration. Again, Charles Malik has the perfect line when he says, “more potently than by any other means, change the university, and you change the world.” Taking back the campus from the excesses of the Left is about more than just winning a spot where we can belong without repression or discrimination. It’s not merely about being represented in the student body; it is about participating in the body politic. I believe strongly that what we accomplish next year under my administration can be a template for conservative thought to flourish once again, here and everywhere. I want to thank all of you who support this vision. When I say that we are going public, I do not mean to say that we are going to fight the culture war rampantly, eristicly, and by embracing the scourges of radicalism; in short, we will not sink to the slander that we regularly face. We will commit to our values, and by doing so, and by having the courage and mutual support to stand strong together, we will spread a strong message that I believe will cut through the typical noise of our campus political culture, and make new waves that allow us to speak our minds and be heard, whether the opposition likes it or not. In closing, I also want to take this opportunity to endorse the current members of the executive board and our freshman representatives for their respective positions: Ian Gallaugher for Vice President, Emma Story for Treasurer, Dougie Neviera for Director of Political Affairs, Morgan Hunt for Secretary, and Charlie Wolther for Event Planner. My friends share this same vision as me, and have a number of their own gifts, talents, and perspectives that College Republicans need in our leadership for this momentous year ahead of us. Over this past year, I have come to know these friends of mine, and we have worked side-by-side to make this past year a success in spite of the tumultuous circumstances. And I am hopeful that we can do great things together with all of you, for all of you, for Boston College, and our beloved America. And so I ask for your vote. We need strong leadership, a bold vision, and someone with the ambition and energy to execute it, and that’s who I am, full stop. And I strongly encourage you to re-elect the current members of the executive board so we can continue the work we started this year. Thank you for your vote, I look forward to leading this organization to a new chapter in the school’s history as we do our part in the fight to save Western civilization and our beloved way of life. God bless. In patriotism, Tom Sarrouf, Chief of Staff Candidate for President of Boston College Republicans
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The Magical World of Hypocrisy2/28/2021 ERIN SPELLMAN
Long gone are the days of simply producing classic cartoons and child-friendly adventure stories. The entertainment powerhouse known as Disney has self-declared its role in serving as the justice meter on many hot-button topics. The problem with Disney stepping forward in this capacity is the utter hypocrisy they display in manufacturing their outrage for topics of their choice. Disney swiftly fired popular actress Gina Carano from the Star Wars spin-off series The Mandalorian on the basis of her conservative views after she compared the political climate in the United States to that of Nazi Germany. According to Disney, Carano’s social media post stating “Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews” was so egregious that it warranted her immediate dismissal. Yet Carano’s comparison of Nazi Germany and the United States was a comparison also made by her co-star, Pedro Pascal; the difference being that Pascal used his comparison to attack the Trump administration’s policy towards illegal immigrants to the Holocaust. Pascal referenced the Holocaust to attack Trump was acceptable in Disney’s book, while Carano, well known for her conservative views, was summarily dismissed for suggesting that the political climate in the US today is showing shades of what could unfold, as it did in Nazi Germany. Given the horrors that occurred in Nazi Germany during the Holocaust, there really is no place for comparison by either actor; however, it sure does beg the question about Disney’s motivation for accepting this comparison by a liberal actor while terminating that of a conservative one. And for Disney, this is just the tip of the proverbial hypocrisy iceberg. Disney’s live action remake of the original 1998 film Mulan was partly filmed in China’s northwestern province of Xinjiang, where it has been reported by human rights groups and foreign governments that an estimated one million Uyghur Muslim residents have been forced into internment camps under the title of “re-education.” Many of the women in these camps have allegedly been raped, tortured, sexually abused, and subject to forced sterilization, an act of genocide. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute has captured satellite imaging of Xinjiang which has led many experts to believe that there are 380 internment camps, many of which are close to industrial parks, illustrating how Uyghur Muslims may be used for forced labor. The Chinese government continuously denies the mistreatment and genocide of Uyghur Muslims. In 2019, a senior official in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) claimed that most people held in the internment camps had returned to society, although journalists, human rights groups, and diplomats have not been allowed to visit the camps. It appears as though Disney, in all their self-righteous desire to right the world’s wrongs, does turn a blind eye to what may, in fact, be a genocide. At the end of Mulan, Disney uses its credits to thank government organizations in Xinjiang, such as the Turpan Bureau of Public Security, which is rumored to be involved in the internment camps, as well as the publicity department of the CCP Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomy Region Committee, which is reported to be a propaganda group for the CCP. Although a major humanitarian crisis did not deter Disney from filming in Xinjiang, recent Georgia legislation banns abortion in cases with fetal heartbeat detection did. Disney has chosen to discontinue production in the state of Georgia over Governor Brian Kemp’s signing of this legislation. Once again, Disney’s hypocrisy is on display for choosing to cancel filming locations based upon their “high moral ground” on the hot-button issue of individual freedoms, yet again another question is begged: what greater loss of individual freedoms could there be than a genocide? If Disney is going to take a political stance that they are opposed to the comparison of Nazi Germany and the United States, or that they are opposed to governmental regulations that restrict individual freedoms, why do they pick and choose who is going to be punished? With Disney controlling much of the media Americans rely on, there is simply no way to reach a level of unity so desperately needed in this country when major corporations pick and choose what tone should be set on certain issues.
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We Have All Won the Historical Lottery2/28/2021 MORGAN HUNT
In the summer of 2017, I cycled through the fields of western Cambodia. A little over 40 years before, around 2 million native Cambodians were stripped away from these fields and killed in death camps by the Khmer Rouge. As I was cycling, I pictured parents being taken away from their children, knowing that in an hour they would be dead. I wondered how many people from each village I passed had been slaughtered by Pol Pot’s regime. It was a horrifying experience. I came back to America with one distinct conclusion: everyone living today in this country, or any other free country, has won the historical lottery. Whether one is rich or poor, white or black, male or female, everyone in this country is free to speak, interact, travel, and work without fear of going to jail or being killed. The vast majority of us have access to healthy food, a comfortable home to live in, a phone to communicate with friends and family, and a car to travel safely in. We neither fear execution from those in power, nor live in miserable poverty. Yet today, many take this all for granted. Instead of counting their many blessings, members of the public critique society with a vengeance. They say that America as a society is oppressive to everyone who isn’t a straight, white, wealthy, male. They maintain the social structures of America are comparable to that of Hitler’s Nazi Germany. According to them, our country is so terrible its independence day shouldn’t be celebrated. I would invite anyone who revels in this mindset to take a trip to the killing fields of Cambodia. I would invite them to travel to Auschwitz to see the remnants of the Holocaust, travel to rural Asia to see the atrocious living conditions people have to face daily, or read up about the Soviet gulags and the Holodomor. All in all, I would ask them to reconsider their level of appreciation for what America has given them. I would ask them whether the freedom and prosperity America’s citizens currently possess has been the norm throughout human history, or the notable exception. Perhaps then, progressive activists wouldn’t be so sanctimonious to burn buildings and yell out “no justice, no peace” in critique of a police force that is rarely discriminatory and unjust. Perhaps then, they would refrain from saying “all countries matter” on the Fourth of July in defiance of our country’s independence and exceptional founding values. Instead, they would focus on using their influence to prevent the ongoing genocide of Uighur Muslims by the Chinese Communist Party, or the near-complete subjugation of women in Saudi Arabia. An honest study of the history of human living conditions and God-given rights around the world provides us with one important conclusion: the quality of life in the 21st century in a select few countries (the US included) is by far the best in human history. Therefore, rather than critique what current society has not done for you, reflect on, and give thanks for, what it has.
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THOMAS K. SARROUF JR.
Jordan Klepper is a comedian from The Daily Show (TDS), a political satire show that airs on Comedy Central. He was hired by the former host of TDS, the left-leaning Jon Stewart, and now works side-by-side with the new host Trevor Noah, who shirks traditional American political titles, though is certainly a man of the Left. Klepper himself has hosted two of his own shows on Comedy Central, but is most famous for “Jordan Klepper Fingers the Pulse,” a segment on TDS that sees him attend Trump rallies and ask questions of some of Trump’s most ill-informed supporters. As one might expect, they give the dumbest answers, which makes for great comedy. I hate to throw my ideological kin under the bus and laugh at their expense, but Klepper’s segment is simply funny, no matter where one stands politically. I often watch with my family, all of whom are liberals of various sorts, but we all roar with laughter as we watch Jordan confound members of Trump’s base. In spite of the fact that his comedy is at the expense of the conservative movement, a movement to which I proudly claim membership, it is good comedy; Klepper, who was part of his high school’s national champion mock trial team, has a lightning-quick wit, which can be seen on display with his spontaneous retorts to the worst right-wing talking points. Some of his comedy is pre-thought and pre-written, but Klepper shines most when he thinks on his feet and ad-libs his jokes, which is one of the hallmarks of a talented comedian. Klepper’s brand of comedy, funny as it is, has serious implications for genuine politics. And I am not talking about the fact that he is a liberal; that hardly matters. Art is an invitation to expand the mind, and let the worldview of another enter into our own limited sphere through symbol, metaphor, and imagery. Comedy is an artform, and is an effective tool for explaining oneself, revealing the absurdity of things, and delivering arguments. I would not suggest that all art that is liberal or leftist is garbage that should be removed or insulated from any praise, as that would defeat the purpose of art. Likewise, comedy could take on any political content and be considered funny, and if it is funny, we should all laugh, whether it stands for our political worldview or against it. As conservatives especially, we can laugh at ourselves. And besides, it’s just comedy; it is not meant to be taken seriously. As Klepper himself noted in an interview with Stephen Colbert, “we [Comedy Central] are literally the fake news.” His actual shows, such as Jordan Klepper Solves Guns, The Opposition with Jordan Klepper, and Klepper, are still political satire, but are more serious and raise some legitimate political issues. By comparison, this segment is only meant to make the mostly-liberal audience of TDS laugh at the excesses of the political right-wing. Well….maybe. There are a couple problems raised in Klepper’s work in “Fingers the Pulse.” For one, and this is the lowest hanging fruit, his work breeds animosity and resentment for “the other.” His work makes the Right look like clowns, and if one does not put the segments into context, questions can easily arise. For the liberal, “this is my fellow American? This nasty, uninformed, unintelligent, racist, xenophobic, sexist bigot has the same rights and freedoms as me? They have the right to vote? Really??” By capturing the fringe, it reminds liberals what they hate about conservatives, and what they are fighting against. Also, keep in mind that the people interviewed actually are overtly racist and sexist. Just take this humorous yet cringeworthy exchange about feminism between Klepper and a portly Trumper: Trump Supporter (TS): These extreme nations, they don’t treat women with respect. Jordan Klepper (JK): We treat women with respect here. TS: Yes we do. JK: That’s an American ideal. TS: Yep. JK: Tell me about your shirt. What’s it say? TS: It says, uh, “Hillary sucks….but not like Monica.” JK: Hilarious. So we were talking about treating women with respect. TS: It’s an American ideal that we treat women with respect. JK: You’ve got to give me the back of that shirt one more time, that’s too much fun. TS: TRUMP THAT BITCH! JK: Haha, we don’t even see the irony in it, I love it! It is quite clearly sexist. And the interviewee is far from being the only one. When Klepper puts these clips back-to-back-to-back, it paints a picture that Trump country is sexist, racist, and xenophobic. Quite simply put, Klepper’s comedy is confirmation bias for the caricature of conservatives that most American cultural institutions paint of us. The conservative asks a different set of questions: “this is what Klepper is showing? These stupid people that make me look bad? Why does the media hate our president and hate hard-working Americans who love the country? Do they not realize that Republican policies actually help women? This is a ploy by the fake news media to malign conservatives and shut the Overton window on our ideas!” If taken seriously, “Jordan Klepper Fingers the Pulse” serves to make the conservative more cynical and resentful of false pictures and caricatures that make our lives more difficult. These ideas about conservatives spread like any other group of people. It is clear and obvious that Klepper is exaggerating the segments, only showing the worst of the worst for comedic effect. His purpose is not to give a well-balanced showing of Trump supporters and conservatives; he is not objective, nor is he purporting to be. Surely not every person he asked delivered a laughably absurd response; the intelligent conservative does not garner laughs required to make the cut. And besides, conservatives also caricature the Left by pointing out their least coherent constituents. Will Witt from PragerU goes around college campuses and records college students saying that Trump is “literally worse than Hitler,” which is hilarious. Or who could forget the famous clip of Jesse Watters eating meat in front of a vegan sociology professor as she explained why eating meat perpetuated “toxic masculinity?” Both sides make jokes at the expense of their political opponents for laughs. The real problem with Jordan Klepper’s political comedy is that it is purely personal. Some are simply exposing the ridiculousness of some parts of the Trump base, and have no deeper content. Other times his segments seek to couple his street interviews with a political point, and it is in these moments that the problem arises. His digs at Trump are all based on Trump’s character, and the implicit critiques are based solely on Trump's hypocrisy, rhetoric, and the inconsistencies of his supporters. For instance, after the Access Hollywood tape scandal, Klepper went around and asked Trump supporters what they thought of Trump’s contemptible comments, which his supporters defended. In another segment, Klepper asked Trumpers about the “lock her up” chants, and then told them that Trump had switched his tune about Clinton. He also questioned them about whether they approved of Trump “draining the swamp,” and then subsequently asked them if they liked Trump’s pick for Secretary of the Treasury, former Goldman Sachs CIO and hedge fund manager, Steven Mnuchin. He went to the boat rally, where he concluded that Trump supporters were privileged to have a rally and support the President in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic and nationwide racial protests and riots. While attending one of Trump’s campaign rallies during the pandemic, one man said that Trump was our first “rock star, super hero president” and that “we should call him ‘President Iron Man,’” to which Klepper replied, “Tony Stark actually gave a shit about science.” When asking people about mail-in voting, Klepper snidely remarked that Trump uses mail-in voting, as if that were a refutation of Trump’s claim that they were more susceptible to fraud than in-person voting or excused absentee balloting. It is evident that the issues themselves are not being considered. Klepper’s retorts reflect the eccentricity of President Trump, some of the outlandish and shocking things he says, and his hypocrisy and self-contradiction. If the best Jordan can do to refute Trump’s presidency is to attack what he says, then that refutation falls far short of the mark. For example, Klepper claims that Trump does not care about science; President Trump has famously called climate change a hoax engineered by China; he suggested in the 2016 Republican primaries that vaccines should be administered to infants in smaller doses based on his own personal experiences; and on COVID he said some things that were quite mind-boggling and patently untrue. Based on what President Trump himself has said, one could be led to the conclusion that he is an anti-science radical. However, when one evaluates his policies on issues of “science,” one grasps a different picture of Trump’s view of science. Despite leaving the Paris Climate Accords, the United States has reduced carbon emissions, while simultaneously becoming energy independent by hydrofracking American shale oil and natural gas reserves. In spite of his concerns about vaccines, which is both a highly debated and highly debatable issue, he has funded the fastest vaccine production regime in human history, while still holding to the same safety standards as other vaccine production processes. And for all of the media’s speculation that Trump was going to “fire Fauci,” and that Trump was not “listening to the science,” Dr. Fauci testified that the President did listen to him and Dr. Deborah Birx about the dangers of the pandemic, and that his response saved lives. So in the final analysis, what exactly does Klepper have on Trump to lead him to such a conclusion? Klepper has Trump’s words; no policy analysis necessary. Jordan Klepper can muster nothing more against Trump and his supporters than Trump’s own words, personal actions that have no bearing on political policy, and idiosyncrasies. This is the heart of the issue. By watching Klepper’s “refutation,” one buys into the implicit frame that politics is only about refuting the hypocrisy and lies of the opponent. Klepper’s argument ultimately boils down to “Trump is a horrible president because all of his supporters are clowns, and he says a bunch of ridiculous and untrue things, and likes to brag about himself.” If you think that’s a ridiculous argument against the former president, and an illegitimate political argument, you would be correct. To be fair, there are issues to be had with Trump’s rhetoric, especially in light of the Capitol riots, which many, myself included, say Trump incited. The populist rhetoric of Trump vs. the establishment, calling the Press the “enemy of the American people,” and not coming out strongly against political violence are all real issues with Donald Trump. But Klepper does not even go after these issues; instead he grills Trumpers about “birtherism.” Refutation of the Right by exposing the hypocrisy of its least competent adherents is a dead letter. It is purely mean-spirited humiliation of fools. But the deepest dilemma is that Klepper’s frame is purely personal. People cannot be separated from politics; we need a politics that places the human being as central. But politics, rightly considered and deliberated, is based on the policies that place human beings at the center, rather than placing the personal idiosyncrasies of our leaders as paramount. Klepper’s brand of comedy inverts a proper understanding of political values. They are purely ad hominem arguments, and have no bearing on genuine political policy. With his red-herring political attacks on the Right, Jordan Klepper, the good comic he is, dumbs down America’s political discourse, and by extension, the American public. |