The internet
is almost without a doubt the single most important invention of the last
thirty years. People are interconnected
to a degree scarcely imaginable a century ago, the time it takes to contact
someone across an ocean is no longer than it takes to reach somebody down the
street. Additionally, news travels
faster than ever before. Where an
individual in the 1940s had to rely on newsreels and newspaper stories for
foreign news—typically weeks out of date by the time the average citizen could
obtain the stories—one nowadays simply needs to type a few key words into any
search engine and the news of the world is before them. With such increased availability of news, one
would imagine that Americans would be more informed as ever; regrettably, this
is not the case.
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Sunday, December 9, 2012
Gun Control after a Tragedy
At this point, the sad
story is known to just about everybody.
On December 1, Jovan Belcher, a linebacker for the Kansas City Chiefs,
killed his girlfriend Kasandra Perkins, who was also the mother of his child, and
drove to the Chiefs’ practice facility and killed himself. The next day, at halftime of Sunday Night
Football, sportscaster Bob Costas gave a two minute monologue expressing regret
about the tragedy and stating his belief that if Belcher had not possessed a
gun, he and his girlfriend would both be alive.
The reaction to this short and measured statement has been unfortunate.
Thursday, December 6, 2012
Defeat in Victory for the Democratic Party
Aside from
the presidential election and the Puerto Rico statehood referendum which I have
discussed in the past, another very important election was held in the state of
Massachusetts last month. The statewide
senatorial election between incumbent Republican Scott Brown, who had won the
seat in a special election after the passing of Ted Kennedy in 2010, and
Democratic candidate Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard law professor and an architect
of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau.
When Warren defeated Brown rather convincingly, Democrats celebrated the
reclamation of a seat which had long been held by their party. The Democratic Party may come to regret their
victory in this election, however.
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
The Exaggeration of Presidential Constitutional Violations
Conservative
commentators, such as Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity, love to
bemoan the assault President Obama is waging on the United States
Constitution. This belief, popular with
fringe members of the Republican Party, has been given an image in paintings by
Jon McNaughton, a Utah based artist. One
of his works, entitled “One Nation Under Socialism” depicts President Obama
holding the Constitution as it is consumed by flames. Another painting, entitled “The Forgotten
Man” shows President Obama standing on the Constitution with President Madison,
known as the “Father of the Constitution,” begging him to get off the
document. Additionally, a depressed man
sits on a nearby bench being comforted by Republican and early presidents as
Democratic presidents applaud our current president for trampling the
Constitution.
Saturday, December 1, 2012
Cents and Sensibility: The Elimination of the Penny and the Nickel
Those closest to me know that an issue which has always been one of my
pet passions is that of penny and nickel elimination. As such, it was with joy that I read reports
this week that the Treasury Department will begin removing pennies and nickels
from circulation starting in 2013. This
should be just the first step that the nation takes to modernize our currency
system in order to save money.
Friday, November 30, 2012
Don’t Believe the Hype: The Future of Guantanamo Bay
No nation is perfect. Every country has either a checkered past, a disgraceful present, or
an ugly underbelly, although most have some combination of the three. The United States is no exception. With slavery, the brutal treatment of Native
Americans, and the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War Two in the
past, contemporary America looks pretty good.
This is not to say that there are not problems which should leave a bad
taste in the mouth of patriots; the denial of equal rights to homosexuals
certainly illustrates that point. One issue
which hurts the United States in terms of international standing does not technically
exist in legal terms. This refers to, of
course, Guantanamo Bay.
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
The Fiscal Ditch and Republican Economic Brinksmanship
Aside
from the Benghazi incident and the scandal around former C.I.A. director David Petraeus,
the most talked about political issue since the November 6th
elections is the “fiscal cliff.” This
refers to the automatic spending cuts which will affect a substantial amount of
the government and the automatic rise in tax rates across the board due to the
expiration of the Bush-Obama tax cuts.
When looked at through a policy lens, one can see that “fiscal cliff” is
a misnomer. A more accurate term is
“fiscal ditch,” a ditch which separates old policies from new.
Monday, November 26, 2012
The Federalist Farmer's Almanac
Good evening everybody, hope you all had a pleasant Thanksgiving. I am pleased to announce that my blog will resume with shorter updates for the next few weeks while I work on a project entitled "The Federalist Farmer's Almanac" which will include some of my favorite entries thus far, some exclusive content from me along with writing from outside contributors. The project is still in the preliminary stage as I continue to recruit writers. If you are interested in submitting a piece contact me at ciollidominic@gmail.com. My first post back should be up later tonight or tomorrow morning.
Welcome back.
Welcome back.
Thursday, November 15, 2012
Important Programming Note
As the temperatures drop and winter approaches, the Farmer is going into hibernation for a few weeks while I write a pivotal paper for one of my classes and work on a super-secret project, details of which will be given shortly.
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
The Fallacies of an Ideological Victory Lap (or Tailspin)
Now that the
2012 elections are in the books, President Barack Obama has earned another term
in the White House with an impressive electoral victory of 332 electoral votes
to former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney’s 206. With President Obama’s victory, social media
exploded with happiness amongst those who lean towards the Democratic Party
while those who sympathize with the Republican Party reacted with bitterness
and disappointment.
However, in the afterglow of the
election, the expectations for the next four years baselessly swung to the
extremes for both parties. Democrats
began praising America for accepting the equality of all people regardless of
sexuality, the acknowledgement amongst Americans that the rich should pay more,
and extolling the basic promotion of freedom.
Republicans once again retreated to their metaphorical bunkers –
stockpiled with guns, ammunition, and canned goods – to shield themselves from
the coming storm of socialism and demonization of those with wealth.
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
The State of Statehood
On November 6th, while
all eyes were fixed on Ohio and Florida, waiting to see who would win the
presidential election, an often forgotten member of the United States was
holding a monumental referendum. Puerto
Rico, an America territory since the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898,
voted for the first time in its history to become a state. This does not end the process, however, as
the procedure to become a state does not often run smooth.
Sunday, November 11, 2012
The Death of Peacetime
Much is made
about how the United States has not fought a war since World War Two, labeling
all the other conflicts “police actions” or a myriad of other excuses. But the reality is that the United States in
the past seven decades has been one of the most bellicose powers the world has
ever seen. In the second half of the
twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty first, America has had
thirteen presidents, and every single one of them have seen American troops on
the ground in foreign nations. The
reason for this militaristic attitude is twofold: first, because of America’s emergence as a
superpower and two, because of the most astonishingly abrupt ideological shift
in the history of American politics.
Thursday, November 8, 2012
Gun Control and the Supreme Court
If
1968 was the year of the assassination, with both Robert Kennedy and Martin
Luther King, Jr. falling victim to deranged assailants,
then 1981 was the year of the failed assassination. In March of that year, newly elected
President Ronald Reagan was shot by John Hinckley, Jr., but survived after he
was quickly rushed to a hospital. A mere
six weeks later, Pope John Paul II was shot four times while in Vatican City by
Mehmet Ali Ağca. Pope John Paul,
however, also managed to survive this attempt.
Despite the failure of these two assassinations, a wave of fear spread across
the United States that gun violence would spill into the everyday lives of
regular citizens. Anti-gun sentiment
reached a fever pitch, particularly in Chicago where the murder rate stood its
highest point in years. Mayor Jane Byrne
proposed a ban on the possession of handguns, giving citizens who obtained a
license before the ban grandfather-clause immunity. The gun control law passed along with several
similar laws across the nation. It
seemed as though the gun control question was settled until, in 2007, a lawsuit
reached the Supreme Court and once more opened the Pandora’s box of gun control
laws.
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Socialism of the Wealthy
In my
experience, the most common barb levied at the Democratic Party’s desire to tax
the income of the wealthiest two percent of Americans at a higher rate, as well
as maintaining and increasing the capital gains and estate taxes is that such
efforts are socialistic attempts to take hard-earned money from the successful
to give to those who are lazy and unsuccessful.
While I believe that I thoroughly debunked the argument regarding higher
income taxes, as well as the supposed laziness of the poor, I am focusing on
the capital gains and estate taxes in this venture into the murky waters of
economic theory.
Saturday, November 3, 2012
The Two Types of Vigilantism: Political Vigilantism
If you missed Part One, concerning criminal vigilantism, check the
archive to the right, as well as the post immediately below this one. Without further ado, I give you a discussion
on political vigilantism.
The Two Types of Vigilantism: Criminal Vigilantism
I believe
that there is a streak in our society of slipping into delusions of potential
grandeur wherein the common man becomes some sort of action hero. This was seen in dazzling display after the
Aurora theatre shootings where several commentators on the bastion of
conservatism, Fox News, lamented the fact that nobody in the theatre was
carrying a firearm of their own. They
believed that if somebody had a gun, they could have used it to protect
themselves and the other innocents in the theatre by shooting and stopping
James Holmes before he could kill and injure as many people as he did. While in reality, the likely result of such a
scenario would be more causalities, I have wondered what gives so many
intelligent people such a faulty assumption prone to a sense of vigilantly
idealization. The answer, I believe,
lies deep within our nation’s history and all the way back to a medieval folk
tale of the nation from which we took our independence, England.
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Israel and the International Community's Inability to End it's Exercitation of the Rights of Conquest
With the
supposed “death of war” which has accompanied the widespread rise of liberal
democracies, as there is a general unwillingness of democracies to go to war,
especially against other democracies, the concept of conquest has almost
completely disappeared from international discourse. In the age of kingdoms and empires, conquest
was one of the most important goals of governments as can be seen by such
conquering powers as the Macedonians, the Romans, and especially the Mongols. While the issue has almost been rendered
irrelevant since the end of World War Two, a lone nation still exercises the
right of conquest over two territories with enormous geopolitical consequences
to today’s world.
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Maturation to Extremism
One
of the main dangers facing the international community in the modern age is the
threat of Islamic extremism and the willingness of its believers to sacrifice
their lives to strike at the “infidels” embodied by Western and secular
societies. Islamophobia has become more
prevalent in the past decade, particularly in America due to the events on
September 11, 2001. This completely
irrational has struck everywhere in American society, from the heights of
government, where former Attorney General John Ashcroft stated that Islam is a
religion in which “God requires you to send your son to die for him,” to the
everyday people, as highlighted by a 2006 Gallup poll which found that 39% of
Americans felt Muslims should be required by the government to carry special
identification which marked them as Muslims.
If that does not sound familiar, I suggest you look up the early stages
of the Holocaust.
Saturday, October 27, 2012
The Cycle of Social Issues
Every topic
discussed in election cycles can be broken down into one of three
categories: economic issues, foreign
policy issues, or social issues. While
many of these will inevitably overlap, the fundamental “elements” are always
present within political stories of any kind.
However, the three topics vary in intensity of emotions they
elicit. Economic issues, while arguably
the most important of the elements, are abstract and complicated to a degree
where most of the electorate, although they will have opinions, do not fully
understand them. For a clear
illustration of this, view my previous post about national debt. Foreign policy, especially in the age of
American predominance on the international stage, also carries significant
political weight; although this is tempered by a certain degree of unity within
the American populace. While differing
ideologies certainly vary on priorities, there is a certain sense of
unification “at the water’s edge.” Social
issues are a completely different story.
Friday, October 26, 2012
Capital Punishment's Detrimental Impact on American Foreign Policy
In
recent years the news, across the differing mediums of newspapers, magazines,
television shows and websites, has been dominated by various issues such as the
economy, our two undeclared wars, Arab uprisings, WikiLeaks, and the death
penalty. While it may not appear so at
first, all of these news topics are connected by their impact on international
relations. The one which would most
likely draw second glances from the above list is the death penalty, but it
does indeed affect our dealings with other nations.
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Globalization and National Economy
Globalization as a process has occurred
in waves throughout human society, beginning as far back as the “Out of Africa”
migration many millennia ago. While
political and social integration on a national scale have occurred in varying
intensities over human history, economic globalization has only recently begun
to impact the world in a day to day manner.
While many social scientists, namely Jürgen Osterhammel and Niels
Petersson, believe that the height of economic integration came in the period
leading up to the first World War (1880-1910), I will focus on the current wave
of economic globalization which came in the wake of the second World War.
Monday, October 22, 2012
Socialism or Patriotic Duty?
While my
goal at the Federalist Farmer is to be as unbiased and non-partisan as
possible, there is a current debate milling around this election which I would
like to briefly discuss. A point that
President Obama has brought in both debates, as well as at several speeches and
rallies, is the tax rate on the wealthy two percent of Americans. He, along with many other Democrats, believes
that the “mega-rich” have a duty to pay more taxes to support their unfortunate
countrymen. Former Massachusetts governor
Mitt Romney, along with a large faction of the Republican party, believes that
such a tax increase would punish success, reward laziness, and take a big step
towards a socialist United States.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
National Debt and the Mythical Creditor Nation
National
debt is a staple of global society in the current age of economic and political
interconnectivity. The conventional
wisdom holds that acquiring debt is fairly cheap, leading nations to
essentially sell their debt to other nations.
Virtually every single nation on the planet has a national debt, whether
it be America’s nearly twelve trillion dollars or Poland’s three hundred eighty
billion dollar debt. Even China, much
maligned as it is today as “owning America’s future” has a large national debt,
most of which in fact is owed to the United States, after the Chinese
government defaulted on a loan provided them in 1990. In this entry, I would like to argue that,
theoretically, a nation would be much better off without debt.
Saturday, July 28, 2012
The Presidential Trifecta
History can be made this election
year, although the vast majority of voters will have no idea of this fact. If Americans reelect Barack Obama as
president in November, they will do something that has only been done one other
time in American history: elect three
consecutive presidents to two terms.
Currently, the only time that
America has had three two-term presidents in a row was 1801 to 1825, when
Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe served in the White
House. These three figures were all
Founding Fathers and thus commanded an immense amount of respect from their
countrymen. Jefferson, of course, was
well known as the author of the Declaration of Independence, as well as a vital
figure in securing French aid during the Revolution. Madison was the president of the
Constitutional Convention and sheparded the newborn United States to existence. Monroe was the least prominent of the three,
but he served as a delegate to the Continental Congress during the 1780s, as
well as carrying the distinction of being the only man to ever hold both the
Secretary of State and Secretary of War cabinet positions at the same time,
under President Madison.
These were great men, men who had a substantial
impact on the forward momentum of the United States, meaning none of them faced
a tough reelection bid. Jefferson,
running for his second term in 1804 against Charles Pinckney won nearly 73% of
the popular vote, one of the most lopsided campaigns in history. James Madison’s reelection bid was closer, with
Madison garnering only 50.4% of the popular vote, but 128 Electoral College
votes to his competitor’s 89. James
Monroe, on the other hand, ran unopposed in his second election, gathering
every Electoral College vote except for one, which was a purely symbolic
gesture to ensure that nobody but George Washington was ever election
unanimously.
One key factor in the election wins
of Jefferson, Madison and Monroe was the lack of any real competition. In the early days of our republic, the two
prominent political parties were the Democratic-Republicans and the
Federalists. After John Adams, the first
and only Federalist president, lost his reelection campaign to Jefferson in
1800, the party began to disappear until it was all but wiped out when
Alexander Hamilton, the de facto leader of the Federalists, was killed in a
duel in 1804. Without an organized party
to combat the Democratic-Republicans for votes, they faced easy elections the
likes of which we will likely never see again.
Therefore, it is more peculiar that
a streak once again emerges now, when the prominent political parties of today,
the Democrats and the Republicans, are both strong.
President Clinton, a Democratic
governor, won two presidental elections, 1992 and 1996, serving all eight years
of his two terms, generally with a high approval rating (AR). According to Gallup, the premier politicalapproval rating tracker, Clinton had an average AR of 55% over his two
terms. His AR in his first term,
however, was slightly below that average at 50%, although it hovered around 55%
in the weeks leading up to the election of 1996. Clinton benefited from an economy boom thanks
to new technologies, the rapid expansion of the internet as a source of
commerce, and peace time spending, being the first president to benefit from
the end of the Cold War.
President Bush’s numbers, however,
read much differently. His average AR was
49%, although his first term average was 62%.
One must take Bush’s AR numbers with a grain of salt, as they spiked to
an unrealistic 90% AR in the weeks after 9/11, and gradually declined
throughout the rest of his two terms, with only fleeting spikes. In the weeks leading up to his reelection
bid, his AR was roughly 50%. Bush’s
second term AR was a dismal 37% as Hurricane Katrina, war fatigue, a weakening
economy and a variety of political gaffes took their toll.
While all the data is not in for
President Obama yet, his average year-to-date AR is 49%, similar to Bush’s overall. However, as mentioned above, Bush’s first
term AR was drastically higher than Obama’s.
In fact, on a week to week basis, Obama’s AR has been higher than Bush’s
for only one week since July 20th 2009. That week, May 6th to 13th
2012 saw Obama at 47% while Bush, in his corresponding week, was at 46%. Not exactly a ringing endorsement.
Clinton has generally been seen as a
good but not great president, usually ranking in the middle of the pack in
surveys of historians. While currently
Bush falls into the lower fourth of presidents, I believe that over time
history will view him slightly more favorably, although he will never catch up
to his predecessor. It is altogether too
early to rank Obama anywhere, regardless of what Sean Hannity or Rachel Maddow
would have you believe. Although the reason for the recent presidential incumbent
success is not currently known to me, perhaps in a few years time it will
become clearer.
With Obama losing more and more
electoral ground due to the still stagnant economy, and his challenger Mitt
Romney losing more and more electoral ground due to Mitt Romney, it remains to
be seen if the second presidential trifecta will be completed. But even if it is, it will pale in comparison
to its transcendent forerunner.
Sunday, July 22, 2012
The Death of American Compromise
With an election looming and key
budgetary votes on the horizon, the left and the right are dug deeply in their
respective trenches and the middle of the aisle may as well be the no man’s
land of Verdun. Liberals and
conservatives refuse to cooperate on any meaningful resolution to the crisis
facing the United States, but this inter-philosophy deadlock has not always
been the case in American history.
Legislative compromise is woven deep
in the fabric of American government, with the earliest seeds planted long
before our current constitution was ratified in 1787. Often mistaken in the history of the American
War for Independence, not all colonies were aggravated by the crown
equally. The northern states, New
England in particular, sounded the drums for independence much louder than the
southern states, namely the Carolinas and Georgia. This geographic divide was one of the many
reasons why the Continental Congress named George Washington as the supreme
commander of the American military. As a
Virginian, he was easier to swallow for Southerners who felt that the war was
purely in New England’s interest.
The cornerstone of American
politics, the Constitution, is rich with compromises, made to ensure the unity
and longevity of the new American republic.
One can scarcely read a sentence of the document without coming across a
compromise within its text. The most
influential, as its name suggests, is the “Great Compromise” between the large
states, such as New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania, and the small states,
namely Rhode Island, Delaware and Connecticut.
The compromise created the current bicameral system, in which a House of
Representatives is based on the population of each state while a Senate has
equal representation for all states.
The drafters of the Constitution
were even able to negotiate an agreement on one of the most dangerous topics in
the early days of the nation:
slavery. While often considered a
pock-mark on the Constitution, the Three-Fifths Compromise shows just how
dedicated all parties were to the country.
Northern and Southern delegates were able to come to an agreement on a
topic as contentious as slavery in order to preserve the nation.
A handful of other compromises would
later be made about slavery, each more impressive than the last. Henry Clay, a Representative and Senator from
Kentucky, was the primary architect of these deals, earning him nickname “The
Great Pacificator” for his ability to cool tempers and negotiate compromises. Clay, however, would likely fume at the
inability for Republicans and Democrats to reach agreements on any meaningful
issue in today’s world.
The ability to reach agreement
across ideological differences is a vital aspect of governance in the
post-monarchy world. When the decisions
rest in more than one figure, as it most obviously does in a democracy, there
will always be disagreement. The
government must be flexible with the ability to quickly react to problems that threaten
the security of the nation. However, as
the past four years have demonstrated, liberals and conservatives have failed
to reach common ground.
They ignore the rich American history of compromise at their own risk,
for every week that passes without progress towards a solution the ground they
stand on gets smaller and smaller, and politicians may not like where they end
up.
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